Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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65. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will provide an update on the efforts to make it easier for employers to access work permits; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52966/22]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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With more than 2.5 million people at work in Ireland, the new Employment Permits Bill will allow us to better compete for global talent, to fill labour market gaps, to support local enterprises and to encourage Foreign Direct Investment while at the same time protecting the rights of workers in the State. While the current system is robust, the existing legislation is inflexible in its operation.

The new Employment Permits Bill will increase the agility and responsiveness of the employment permits system, modernise it, and ensures that it can adapt rapidly to changes in the Irish labour market. It will do so without changing the core policy underlying Ireland’s economic migration system which is one where the system should deliver the skills and labour needs in the economy, while prioritising the Irish and EEA labour pool.

I published the Employment Permits Bill 2022 with second stage reading in the Dáil concluding on the 12th October. This Bill has been drafted to increase agility to be able to more quickly respond to both growth and contraction in labour demand, and to align the criteria for employment permits to the changing needs of the economy by restructuring the legislation to ensure that the system’s operational details and processes are prescribed in Regulations, as opposed to primary legislation.

The changes proposed in the Bill to make it easier for employers to access employment permits in the future, to include:

- moving some operational detail to Regulations to improve the agility of the system for easier modification as circumstances require;

- to allow for the rejection of incomplete or inaccurate applications which will mean employer applicants will be informed more readily that there are errors with their application, and for the return of the fee without processing delays;

- consolidating the Acts of 2003 and 2006 and the Amendment Act of 2014 will utilise a clearer structure;

- modernising the Labour Market Needs Test

Officials of my Department are also evaluating the current employment permits processing system so that new IT procedures can be developed in tandem with the new legislation including, for example, work on plans to redevelop the system onto a cloud-based platform to ensure that the service is as flexible and efficient as possible.