Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 2 November 2021
87. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the number of applications to the critical skills employment permit in the past three years to date in 2021; the number accepted, refused and appealed, respectively; and the average time to receive a permit from date of application to the date of issuing the permit. [52271/21]
View answerThe employment permits system is managed through the operation of the critical skills and ineligible occupations lists which determine employments that are either in high demand or are ineligible for consideration for an employment permit and these lists are subject to twice-yearly evidenced based review.
Since March 2020, my Department has implemented Covid-19 contingency arrangements moving employment permit operations seamlessly to a totally remote working environment. In fact, Ireland was one of the few countries that has managed to keep their employment permit system fully operational throughout the crisis.
From the outset of the crisis, in order to assist the HSE and all other medical providers in the State to respond to, and to assist with, the public health response to the threat of Covid-19, all medical employment permits are expedited with immediate effect.
My Department has seen a significant increase in applications for employment permits this year. To the end of September, some 17,084 applications were received, representing a 41% increase over the same period in 2020 (12,115) and a 23% increase on 2019 (13,868), which itself represented an 11 year high in applications. To date (20/10/2021), my Department has issued some 12,186 employment permits since the beginning of the year, which represents a significant volume of activity.
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 compares favourably, even at current processing times.
However, my Department is very conscious of the recent lengthening of timeframes for processing Employment Permit applications and is committed to reducing these further. My Department is taking a range of measures to reduce the current backlog. It advises all 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 September update on employment permit processing timelines.
|
Critical Skills Employment Permits |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021* |
|
Applications Received |
7,117 |
8,524 |
8,234 |
10,360 |
|
Applications Issued |
5,863 |
7,524 |
8,195 |
6,707 |
|
Applications Refused |
442 |
451 |
391 |
221 |
|
Average Wait Time for CSEP (Days) |
41 |
30 |
23 |
58 |
|
Appeals Received (All Permit types) |
677 |
641 |
549 |
326 |
*19/10/2021
Appeals received are captured collectively by all permit types at the end of each month.
