Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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246. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will address concerns that the delay in issuing work permits for persons from outside the EEA is having an extremely adverse impact on capacity of certain sectors to maintain viability, particularly the pig sector and the slaughtering plants; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50855/21]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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The employment permits system is designed to facilitate the entry of appropriately skilled non-EEA nationals to fill skills and/or labour shortages, in circumstances where there are no suitably qualified Irish/EEA nationals available to undertake the work and that the shortage is a genuine one.

The system is managed through the use of lists designating highly skilled and ineligible occupations.  In order to maintain the relevance of these lists of occupations to the needs of the economy and to ensure their ongoing relevance to the State’s human capital requirements, they undergo twice-yearly evidence-based reviews.  The reviews are guided by research undertaken by the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs (EGFSN), the Skills and the Labour Market Research Unit (SLMRU), SOLAS and involves public/stakeholder consultation.  Account is taken of education outputs, sectoral upskilling and training initiatives and known contextual factors such as Brexit and, in the current context, COVID-19 and their impact on the labour market.  Consideration is also taken of the views of the Economic Migration Interdepartmental Group, chaired by my Department and of the relevant policy Departments.  Officials from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are represented on the Economic Migration Interdepartmental Group.

In May 2018, a pilot quota-based scheme was introduced to remove certain agri-food occupations from the ineligible occupations list.  The scheme provided for 2,500 General Employment Permits for the meat processing industry, 500 for horticulture and 150 for the dairy sector to address the immediate needs of the sectors in sourcing labour.  In addition, a quota of 300 permits was granted in respect of meat deboners.  To date this pilot scheme has proved very successful for a range of employers in the sector.  These three quotas created for dairy farm assistant, horticulture worker and meat processing operative have now expired.  

A review of the occupation lists is currently well underway with submissions, including those in respect of meat & pig processing, under consideration.  It is expected that the review will be finalised in the coming weeks and any changes necessary to deal with verified skills or labour shortages will be made at that time.

My Department has seen a significant increase in applications for employment permits this year.  Latest statistics show to the end of September, some 17,084 applications were received, representing a 41% increase over the same period in 2020 (12,115) and a 23% increase on 2019 (13,868), which itself was an 11 year high. 

Processing times have been impacted by this increase in demand but also because of the HSE cyber-attack.  As a result, employment permit applications associated with the July Doctors rotation (which occurs twice yearly in January and July) had to be submitted either manually or through other nonstandard methods.  This resulted in a significant additional administrative burden in dealing with these applications, requiring staff to be temporarily reassigned to assist in the process and had a direct impact on wider processing times for other permit applications. 

It is important to point out that when set against other international employment permit regimes, Ireland continues to compare extremely favourably, even at current processing times.  However, my Department is very conscious of the recent lengthening of timeframes for processing Employment Permit applications and is committed to reducing these further.  My Department is taking a range of measures to reduce the current backlog as quickly as possible.  It advises employers to take current timelines into account as part of their recruitment plans.

My Department updates the employment permit processing timelines on its website on a weekly basis and regularly issues updates on relevant employment permit matters to Trusted Partners such as the recent update on employment permit processing timelines.