Ciarán Cuffe
Question:74 Mr. Cuffe asked the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he plans to review the awarding of work permits to employers rather than employees. [24792/04]
View answerWednesday, 13 October 2004
Questions (73)
Written answers
At present, the work permit facility grants the permit to an employer to recruit a specific employee to fill a specific vacancy, where the employer has been unable to find a suitable employee within Ireland or the wider European economic area. This arrangement does have the safeguard that the non-EEA employee in question is coming to fill a specific vacancy, an important factor when most of the personnel in question are at the lower end of the skills spectrum.
In recent years, work permit personnel have been readily facilitated in changing employers and in such circumstances a new work permit is issued to a new, eligible, employer. This flexibility has been possible and warranted by the relatively high number of vacancies arising in recent years.
If we were to move to a situation where a work permit was given to the individual employee, it would in effect be giving an authorisation to come to Ireland in search of an employer. This would give rise to a number of serious policy questions and significant resource issues. My Department is confident that since 1 May 2004, through EU enlargement, we should be able to meet the great bulk of our overseas labour needs from within the EEA.