Vol. 467 No. 7
328 Mr. Lawlor asked the Minister for Enterprise and Employment the outcome of discussions between his Department and the Irish Airline Pilots' Association on the employment difficulties being encountered by qualified Irish pilots and the rating levels required by the airline companies concerned. [13955/96]
As the Deputy is aware officials from my Department met members of the Irish Airline Pilots' Association to discuss the employment difficulties being encountered by qualified Irish pilots in Ireland.
It appears that although Irish pilots may well be qualified the difficulty is that they need further training to become "type rated" for each type of aircraft. This extra training is very expensive and is generally supplied by the air line company concerned. At peak season and in unforeseen circumstances the air line companies need to look abroad, sometimes outside and European Economic Area (the EEA comprises the EU, Norway and Iceland), to find suitably type rated pilots.
Following on that meeting my Department took the matter up with the air line companies concerned explaining our concerns and that future decisions regarding work permits in this area would take into account the training programmes in place in each company. Each of them have written to explain their training programmes which they hope obviate the need to recruit abroad and this information has been passed on to the Irish Airline Pilots' Association.
