Written answers

Tuesday, 14 June 2022

Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment

Work Permits

Photo of Colm BurkeColm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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164. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the action that is being taken to co-ordinate work permit applications with visa applications in order to reduce down the time delay that is currently occurring in processing these applications; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28924/22]

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Under the Employment Permit Acts, in order to work in the State all non-EEA nationals require a valid Employment Permit or relevant immigration permission from the Minister for Justice which allows them to reside and work in the State without the requirement for an Employment Permit. The Irish State’s general policy is to promote the sourcing of labour and skills needs from within the workforce of the European Union and other EEA states. However, where specific skills prove difficult to source within the EEA, an employment permit may be sought in respect of a non-EEA national who possess those skills.

My Department experienced a significant increase in applications for employment permits in the past year, impacting on processing times. From the start of January to the end of December 2021, some 27,666 applications were received, representing a 69% increase over the same period in 2020 (16,293) and a 47% increase on 2019 (18,811), which itself represented an 11 year high in applications. 16,275 employment permits were issued in 2021, and a total of 17,968 applications processed, which represents a significant volume of activity.

The increased demand was also driven by the extension of categories of employment permits following the Review of the Occupational Lists in October 2021.

My Department and I recognise the impact delays in the processing times for employment permits has for businesses and their workers. An internal plan of action has been implemented which has increased resources and implemented more efficient methods of processing applications in the permits system. The processing team has trebled in size and daily output has more than tripled compared to 2021 levels.

Since the implementation of this plan, the Employment Permits Unit has made positive progress by reducing the number of applications awaiting processing from about 11,000 in January 2022 to c. 6,000 today, despite further strong growth in demand in 2022. As new staff were trained on Critical Skills and Intra Corporate Transfer Employment Permits, processing times for those permits have fallen from 21 weeks to 5 weeks. The Department aims to maintain processing times for these permit types at under 6 weeks for all of Q2.

The Employment Permits Unit has recently completed processing 3,000 additional General Employment Permits applications made available to the meat and horticultural sectors, following the last review of the Occupational Lists, in addition to normal processing workload.

Within the last month processing times for General Employment Permit applications for Trusted Partners fell from 22 weeks to 14 weeks, while applications from Standard applicants fell from 22 weeks to 17 weeks. These should continue to fall, with processing times considerably reduced by the end of Quarter 2.

The administration and processing of immigration permissions, including visas, is a separate system with a different legislative framework encompassing rules and requirements to the employment permits regime and is the policy responsibility of the Department of Justice.

My officials liaise regularly with their Department of Justice colleagues to deliver changes to improve the efficiency of both systems.

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