Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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The cross-departmental Strategic Workforce Advisory Group was established by the Minister of State for Mental Health and Older People, Mary Butler, in March 2022. My Department was represented on the Group which was charged with examining strategic workforce challenges in publicly and privately provided front-line carer roles in home support and nursing homes and the Report of the Group was published on 15 October.

The Report includes 16 recommendations spanning the areas of recruitment, pay and conditions of employment, barriers to employment, training and professional development and included the recommendation that home-support workers be made eligible for an employment permit.

My Department will make 1,000 employment-permits available for home-support workers from the start of the new year. In order to safeguard these workers, employers will be required to offer them a minimum two-year contract with a minimum salary of €27,000 based on a 39-hour week, with a minimum continuous shift-length per working day of 4 hours.

To this end, my officials and I are working with counterparts at the Department of Health on the regulations necessary to give effect to this recommendation as soon as is possible.

In addition, my Department has been actively responding over the last year to the concerns raised by the Department of Health with regard to the critical short supply of skills in a number of roles in this crucial sector for our country.

In June 2021 a number of roles were removed from the Ineligible Occupations List, including the health care assistant role, to allow applications for General Employment Permits to be made.

In June 2022 changes were made to provide access to the Critical Skills Employment Permit for non-EEA nationals wishing to take up employment in the State in the broader health sector including cardiac physiologist, occupational therapist and physiotherapist roles.

Including these roles on the Critical Skills Occupations List enabled the HSE to address the significant recruitment challenges for these healthcare professions, whilst working towards a resourcing strategy delivering sufficient domestic supply of health care staff, maximising self-sufficiency within the Irish state for the resourcing and delivery of publicly funded health services for the future.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment works with other Departments to promote an integrated approach to addressing labour and skills shortages being experienced in the economy.

The Department continues to keep the employment permits system under review in light of changing labour market circumstances.