The employment permits system is designed to facilitate the entry of appropriately skilled non-EEA nationals to fill skills and/or labour shortages, in circumstances where there are no suitably qualified Irish/EEA nationals available to undertake the work and that the shortage is a genuine one.
The system is managed through the operation of the critical skills and the ineligible occupations lists which are subject to twice yearly evidence-based review. These reviews are guided by available research undertaken by the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs (EGFSN), and the Skills and the Labour Market Research Unit (SLMRU) in SOLAS and a public consultation where a range of stakeholders, sector representatives and individual employers make submissions seeking to make changes to the system. Account is taken of education outputs, sectoral upskilling and training initiatives and known contextual factors such as Brexit and, in the current context, COVID-19 and their impact on the labour market. Consideration is also taken of the views of the relevant policy Departments and the Economic Migration Interdepartmental Group, chaired by my Department.
A review is currently underway at present, 26 submissions have been received from a range of sectors and stakeholders. It is expected that this will be finalised late September/early October.
My Department has seen a significant increase in applications for employment permits this year. To the end of August, some 14,624 applications were received, representing a 35% increase over the same period in 2020 (10,772) and a 19% increase on 2019 (12,276). Some 9,526 employment permits were issued over this period.
Processing times have been impacted by this increase in demand but also because of the HSE cyber-attack. As a result, employment permit applications associated with the July Doctors rotation (which occurs twice yearly in January and July) had to be submitted either manually or through other nonstandard methods. This resulted in a significant additional administrative burden in dealing with these applications, requiring staff to be temporarily reassigned to assist in the process and had a direct impact on wider processing times for other permit applications.
It is important to point out that when set against other international employment permit regimes, Ireland continues to compare extremely favourably, even at current processing times. However, my Department is very conscious of the recent lengthening of time-frames for processing Employment Permit applications and is taking a range of measures to reduce the current backlog as quickly as possible and is confident that they will bear fruit over the coming weeks and months. It advises employers to take current timelines into account as part of their recruitment plans.
My Department updates the employment permit processing timelines on its website on a weekly basis and regularly issues updates on relevant employment permit matters to Trusted Partners such as the recent update on employment permit processing timelines.
I and my officials meet with sector representatives, individual employers and other stakeholders to discuss a range of issues, including recruitment challenges, in relation to economic migration policy and the employment permit regime.
