Ireland operates a managed employment permits system, maximising the benefits of economic migration and minimising the risk of disrupting Ireland’s labour market. The regime is designed to facilitate the entry of appropriately skilled non-EEA nationals to fill skills or labour shortages in the State in the short to medium term. In framing policy, consideration is given to other instruments that are also available in meeting skills shortages challenges, such as upskilling and activation of people who are unemployed.
Following an internal plan of action which increased resources and implemented efficiency measures, the employment permits unit has significantly reduced the processing time for employment permit applications compared with last year when waiting time had peaked at 21 weeks. The current processing time for new employment permit applications is much shorter than that, at about 18 days, or, if it is on the critical skills list, at about 16 days.
My Department works with other Departments to provide an integrated approach to address labour and skills shortages in the longer term. My Department actively responds to concerns raised by various sectors about skills supply shortages, as evidenced by several amendments to employment permits regulations over recent years, in which the sectors most impacted by skills shortages were provided with access to employment permits, including in agriculture and the agrifood sector.
The occupational lists - ineligible occupations list and critical skills occupation list - for employment permits are subject to evidence-based reviews incorporating consideration of available research and a public consultation, which provides stakeholders with an opportunity to submit data on skills or labour shortages. Submissions to the review are considered by the interdepartmental group on economic migration policy, with membership drawn from relevant Departments, which may provide observations on the occupations under review.
My Department is currently engaging with other Departments, including the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, to consider submissions received in the last most recent public consultation to review the occupations lists which ran from June to August this year. We got more than 100 submissions during that process. I hope we can finalise the new choices we will make, I suspect by the middle of next month.