Work permits law will help attract tech graduates

The Government has introduced work permits legislation to make it easier to attract technology graduates to Ireland.

The initiative aims to address the growing shortage of skilled informational and communications technology personnel.

Jobs Minister Richard Bruton said: “The legislation we are publishing today will make a major contribution to the overall reforms we are delivering in the employment permits area.

“It codifies and clarifies the law in this area to make the system more transparent and obligations clearer to businesses and other stakeholders.

“It also makes the system more flexible and responsive to changing economic circumstances, so that our employment permits system can respond quickly and allow our economy benefit from quickly emerging opportunities.”

Mr Bruton said that because of planning in the education system, three in four jobs available in the technology sector will come from Irish third-level institutions. The reform of the work permit system is aimed at plugging remaining gaps.

The legislation, which will be introduced by the summer, will involve a 58% reduction in the processing time for employment permits; improvements in the appeals process and the number of appeals; as well as a broadening of the high-skilled eligible occupations list.

“The law also addresses deficiencies in the law identified by the High Court in the Muhammad Younis case, and makes sure that employers cannot benefit, at the cost of the employee and his/her employment rights, from situations where employment contracts cannot be enforced because an overseas employee does not hold an employment permit.”

It emerged in 2011 that a Pakistani worker, Muhammad Younis, had been subjected to slave-labour type conditions in a Dublin restaurant over a seven-year period.