Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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86. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he is satisfied with the current operation of the critical skills lists under the employment permit system in respect of skills that are in critical shortage in the labour market; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7029/22]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Ireland operates a managed employment permits system maximising the benefits of economic migration and minimising the risk of disrupting Ireland’s labour market. The system is designed to supplement Ireland's skills and labour supply over the short to medium term by allowing enterprises to recruit nationals from outside the EEA, where such skills or expertise cannot be sourced from within the EEA at that time. However, this objective must be balanced by the need to ensure that there are no suitably qualified Irish/EEA nationals available to undertake the work and that the shortage is a genuine one.

A key to the delivery of the Government’s overarching policy strategies is human capital, primarily through cultivating an indigenous pool of talent and labour. The employment permits system plays a supporting role in the delivery of these strategies by supplementing the labour and skills base where gaps are identified.

The system is vacancy led and managed through the operation of the occupation lists: the critical skills list in respect of skills that are in critical shortage in the labour market and the ineligible occupations lists for which a ready source of labour is available from within Ireland and the EEA.

The lists are reviewed twice a year to ensure their ongoing relevance to the State’s human capital requirements, guided by available research undertaken by the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs (EGFSN), and the Skills and the Labour Market Research Unit (SLMRU) in SOLAS. Cognisance is also taken of education outputs, sectoral upskilling and training initiatives and contextual factors such as Brexit and more recently COVID 19 and their impact on the labour market.

The Department works with other Government Departments via the Economic Migration Interdepartmental Group to promote an integrated approach to address labour and skills shortages in the longer term. Where shortages are clearly evidenced, the employment permit system is flexible enough to address them in real time.

As part of this review process, the Department also invites submissions from industry representatives and stakeholders. The submission process is an opportunity for stakeholders to provide additional information and potentially different perspectives on the nature and extent of skill shortages. Stakeholder submissions are a vital source of information, helping inform the Department’s final assessment of the status of occupations.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the labour market and economy was a significant consideration in the outcome of the reviews conducted since the onset of the pandemic. However, changes were made during 2021 to extend eligibility for an employment permit to those sectors most impacted by the pandemic, addressing the more immediate skills and labour shortages across key economic sectors including the Health, Agri/Food and Hospitality sectors.

In order to address some inflexibilities in the system, my Department is currently drafting a new Employment Permits Bill to increase the agility and responsiveness of the system, to modernise it and to ensure that it is capable of adapting to rapid changes in the needs of the labour market of the future and to fluctuation in demand contingent on the economic cycle.

Employment permit policy is part of the response to addressing skills deficits which exist and are likely to continue into the medium term, but it is not intended over the longer term to act as a substitute for meeting the challenge of up-skilling the State’s resident workforce, with an emphasis on the process of lifelong learning, and on maximising the potential of EEA nationals to fill our skills deficits.