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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 13 Jun 2000

Vol. 521 No. 1

Priority Questions. - Work Permits.

Nora Owen

Ceist:

26 Mrs. Owen asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the details of the arrangements for the issuing of work permits to fill the skills shortages in our economy; the number of staff available in her Department to deal with the issuing of work permits in general; the number of permits that have been issued since October 1999 to date; the average length of time for the issuing of each permit; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [16715/00]

Applications for work permits to employ non-European Economic Area nationals in the State are made to my Department by employers in the first instance. Permits are generally granted where the employer concerned can demonstrate that they have been unable to recruit an Irish or other EEA national for the position or positions concerned and where the relevant immigration and labour law requirements are met.

At present, a total of nine full-time and three part-time staff in my Department are engaged in the issuing of work permits. Since 1 October 1999 over 6,100 work permits have been issued. This is comparable to a figure of 4,200 in the corresponding period of the preceding year. The length of time taken to process an application for a work permit will always depend on the individual circumstances of the case concerned.

The target time for dealing with applications last year was four weeks. Since the beginning of this year, however, there has been a doubling in the number of applications received and, as a result, the time taken to process individual applications has increased to six weeks. Immediate steps have been taken to deal with this increase, including overtime arrangements and the assignment of extra staff to the work permit section of the Department. It is my intention in the short-term to reduce the average processing time to under four weeks and ultimately to two weeks.

Is the Minister aware that the average waiting time now is eight weeks and not six or four weeks? Will she tell me why no one in the section is available to answer the telephone? I realise the nine full-time and three part-time people must process the applications. Is the Minister aware that an increasing number of people get an answering machine every time they ring the work permits section? Will she tell the House whether she has instituted a system whereby employers now only receive a quota of workers? If an employer applies for work permits for ten non-EEA workers and he or she only has ten people working in the company, will the Minister say why that person is not allowed to bring in the ten workers if that is what he or she needs? I have been told a quota system is in operation. I do not know if such a system is intentional or not.

What protection exists for employers who bring workers in to the country under the visa system where those workers, having arrived in Ireland with the visas, leave the company and go to work somewhere else and the staff in the work permits section demand that the employer who brought them in return the visas which are now cancelled? What guarantee exists that we are getting workers to fill the skills shortages or is the system being abused so that people can enter the country and move around from one sector to another?

Two different situations are involved. Under the working visa system which we introduced a number of months ago and which is now being implemented a person can obtain a work visa for two years. They are not committed to stay with the company in relation to which they originally obtained the visa and it would be unreasonable to expect us—

Are they committed to staying in the same sector?

If he or she is in the information technology sector they are committed to remaining in that sector. It is done on the basis of professional qualifications and they are being granted to engineers, planners, architects, IT professionals and nurses. We have not extended it beyond those categories for the moment.

As regards work permits, individual companies have complained to me and, after having investigated their complaints, I have found that the fault has lain with the companies in 95% of the cases. For example, if a person does not have a visa to enter Ireland I am not in a position to allow them to enter with just a work permit. They must obtain certification from the Garda Síochána and so on. Difficulties would arise where an address would be given and the Garda could not vouch for the fact that the person was living at that address. That would be in the case of a person who had been here before and had had a permit. There has been a great deal of publicity about the situation in Galway where a company told people to come to Ireland, to tell the authorities when they arrived that they were visitors and to then apply for the permits. We cannot allow people to encourage others to break the law.

I am not aware the telephone was not answered in that section of the Department, but new staff were recently assigned to it and the section is working extremely hard. I am sure most employers are satisfied with the service they receive. We must be vigilant. We must ensure Irish nationals are not being done out of a job. There have been situations where almost no effort was made to employ Irish staff and an effort was made to bring in non-national staff and pay them a great deal less than might have been paid to Irish employees. We must assess each case on the basis of its merits to ensure people do not seek to avoid their responsibilities by bringing in others when unemployed Irish people could do the jobs.

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