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Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 10 July 2018

Tuesday, 10 July 2018

Questions (66)

Billy Kelleher

Question:

66. Deputy Billy Kelleher asked the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation if she has a long-term plan in place to deal with skills shortages in various sectors; her views on whether the current employment permits system is fit for purpose for sourcing non-EU labour; and the strategies in place to deal with labour shortages. [30833/18]

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Oral answers (6 contributions)

Has the Minister's Department a long-term plan in place to deal with the skills shortages in various sectors? Is the current employment permit system fit for the purpose of sourcing non-EU labour? What are the strategies in place to deal with labour shortages across the economy?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue.

Access to a high-quality, innovative and adaptable talent pool is critical for the sustainable growth of the Irish economy and keeping Ireland competitive. While skills policy is primarily a matter for the Department of Education and Skills, my Department supports the work of the expert group on future skills needs, EGFSN, which plays a key role in identifying the future skills needs of enterprise. Recently completed work and ongoing work being undertaken by the EGFSN focuses on the food and drink sector, design, high-level ICT, Brexit-related skills needs and digitalisation.

As part of the new national skills architecture, the work of the EGFSN feeds into the National Skills Council, NSC. Together with additional skills and labour market intelligence provided by the regional skills fora and SOLAS, the council, of which the Secretary General of my Department is a member, provides a mechanism for mediating demands on resources in a manner that facilitates the prioritisation of investment in identified skills needs and enhancing the responses by education and training providers to delivery of those needs.

The work of the EGFSN informs my Department's employment permit policy. Employment permits are part of the response to addressing skills needs likely to continue into the medium term. Employment permit policy has focused on facilitating the recruitment of highly skilled personnel from outside the European Economic Area, EEA, where skills needs cannot be met by normal recruitment or training.

The system for determining eligibility for employment permits is flexible and responsive to change, with the list of eligible occupations reviewed on a biannual basis. It is not, however, intended as a long-term substitute for upskilling the State's resident workforce or sourcing skills from within the EEA. In undertaking any adjustment in the orientation of the system, the interests of the 219,300 people on the live register in Ireland and the 17.5 million unemployed in the EU 28 must be remembered.

As we have been approaching full employment, I have requested my Department to conduct a review of economic migration policies underpinning the current permits system to ensure our policies fully support Ireland's emerging labour market needs. This review is scheduled for completion in the coming weeks. As the review was under way, I became acutely aware of the emerging labour shortages being experienced in the agriculture and hospitality sectors, and I asked that these sectors be prioritised. This resulted in a pilot scheme being developed to allow workers for specific occupations in the agriculture sector to be sourced from outside the EEA. The temporary scheme provides for 500 permits for the horticulture sector, 250 for the meat industry and 50 for the dairy sector. Other recent changes to the regulations removed certain chef grades from the ineligible occupation list.

The strategies in place to ensure Ireland's skills needs are met include the overarching National Skills Strategy 2025 and the Action Plan for Education 2016-2019 and its associated annual implementation plans, in addition to strategies focused on apprenticeships and traineeships, ICT skills, STEM and foreign languages.

I thank the Minister for the reply. There is no doubt, based on the assessments made by the Department and stakeholders in industry, and by those who analyse the broader economy, that there are massive labour and skills shortages across huge swathes of the economy. The construction sector will have considerable difficulties meeting the demand that will be placed on it in the years ahead in terms of infrastructural development and meeting the housing needs of the population. This difficulty is coupled with a shortage of skills in transport, the hospitality sector, agriculture, which the Minister mentioned, and other key areas of the economy. Therefore, we have a major problem.

The expert group on future skills needs assesses the economy based on a five-year horizon. Training some of the people takes longer than that so we need to look beyond five, seven, ten or 12 years in assessing what the economy needs. The most damning point is that there are only four civil servants working in the expert group in the Department to assess what the economy needs. This is in the context of a labour shortage of considerable proportions. We have failed to assess the demand and, more important, we have failed to assess and meet the need.

There are nine regional skills fora across the country. They are engaging with industry to ascertain the needs.

With regard to the work permits, which are the responsibility of my Department, I need evidence before we can issue them for certain sectors. In the area of agriculture, the horticulture sector was issued with 500 permits. The meat-processing sector got 250 permits and the dairy sector got 50. The allocation was evidence-based. The sectors sent the information to the relevant Department, which in their case was the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, and a case was then made to my Department. I absolutely recognise that there were pressures in that area. If there are pressures in other areas, I encourage them to feed into the relevant Department. What I described happened in the hospitality sector also. The matter was raised with me.

We need evidence. A priority for me is to address the needs of the 219,300 on the live register. We have to take account of the fact that there are 17.5 million people unemployed across the European Union. These are areas that we need to address.

I accept all that but the harsh reality is that the economy does need labour. There are considerable shortages in certain areas, including construction, agriculture, hospitality and transport. There are now shortages across the healthcare sector.

There are labour shortages across huge swathes of the economy. If one wishes to highlight an indictment or failure of policy one need only look at the apprenticeship programmes. There are simply not enough people either applying for or expressing an interest in key areas of the crafts and trades. That alone indicates there has been a failure of policy in terms of assessing the demand and putting in place policies that would alleviate the pressures that will invariably arise. Take the example of construction. We have a housing requirement of approximately 35,000 new houses per year but before we start building any houses there are already labour shortages in the construction industry. That is how far behind we are. We also do not have a pool of labour available from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe, as we had previously, because their economies have converged with the European economies.

We are developing apprenticeship schemes in all areas of the economy and there have been a huge number of calls in respect of different sectors. In fact, I am familiar with a number of cases where industry has come together with the education sector to develop the apprenticeship courses that are required. They start off with traineeships and then develop into full apprenticeships. These have been very beneficial. I am acutely aware that industry needs a pool of highly talented people to continue to fill the demands on the workforce. We have an expanding and growing economy and there are a number of different initiatives across the board in terms of upskilling, reskilling and apprenticeship schemes. We are working hard to develop and roll them out nationally. As I said, I was aware of the ones that have been addressed but there are further pressures, for example, in the healthcare sector as the Deputy mentioned. I recently met representatives of the nursing homes and I told them to put their case to the Department of Health and show the evidence. I am happy to look at it in order to ease those pressures.

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