Richard O'Donoghue on refunds, permits backlog and visa delays

Thank you, Chair. I wish to submit the following priority question on behalf of Independent Ireland to ask the Minister of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment the cause of the high volume of refunds in employment permits applications and resulting in processing delays. Could you make a statement on the matter? Thank you very much, Deputy, for your question. My Department has made significant progress in recent years in improving the employment permits processing system to ensure the services responsive to business needs and prevailing economic conditions. Following a significant increase in demand in 2021 and 2022, the Department implemented an action plan which increases resources to introduce effective methods of processing permit applications. The number of applications awaiting processing has been reduced from approximately 11,000 in January 2022, with processing timelines of up to 22 weeks to just over 4,000 at the start of this year. As of the 18th of April, I am pleased to report that this number is under 2,000 and processing times for all permits have been reduced to within one to two weeks. Improvements have also been made in respect to the refund process. Fees are refunded for a variety of reasons, for example, where an application has been submitted for a role that is ineligible for a permit or where the quota for the role has been reached or where an applicant is refused. Due to the overall backlog and high volume of demand in recent years, users were also experiencing delays in the refund process. However, following process improvements, the majority of refunds are now issued directly to the credit or debit card used to pay for the application within five working days. My Department remains committed to offering an effective employment permit system. Just this week, the Employment Permit Unit launched its new permit processing system, the Employment Permit Online. This is a new cloud-based system, replacing older technology and will transform the way employment permits are submitted, processed and issued. By introducing a portal space with individual online accounts for both employers and employees, it will be easier for users to get up-to-date information on their applications and it will also provide users with more ownership on their accounts. The new Employment Permit System will make the application process easier, more secure and more intuitive in doing so to reduce the inaccuracies in the submission of applications, resulting in more streamlined processing experience. Thank you, Minister, for your reply. I am delighted to see that the new portal is actually up and running, finally up and running. But, Minister, we have a bigger problem from this. The permits are actually starting to work. But there is not much point to having a permit if you cannot get the visa with it. And the department is not speaking. So we have a lot of people at the moment that are getting permits and they are not getting the visas. And it is like if there is one department not talking to the other. So whereas you have excelled on the permit side, the department on the other side is not getting the visas through. So we have had a lot of cases this week alone on the same cases again that have been gone over the last three or four months waiting for the visas. So I do compliment you on the permit side of it to say where it is going. But we need to make sure permits have to follow with visas and they need to be in tandem to make sure that we can get people that want to come into this country legitimately that they get here with their permits into employment and they also have the visas to work with it as well. Thank you Deputy for raising this important matter. And back in December of 2022, the government did make a decision to implement a single acquisition application process for employment permits, but also to ensure that the immigration permissions are developed in tandem with that. And indeed, the new system now that has been introduced and is currently live, that provides similar technology that is currently in place within the Department of Justice and indeed will assist and provide the required infrastructure for a single processing between the respective departments. And I know that there is a committee and subgroup in place in terms of a project management team that is co-coordinated by my department and the Department of Justice that is working on a single application process because we know you can't have one without the other in terms of the processing times and we look forward to making significant progress in that regard. Thank you Minister and I look forward to it as well. I have seen this week at the moment where we had actually permits that came true and actually the visas actually came to us within two days of those, but we have other ones then that have gone back two and three months. So I am looking forward to this new system to see will it work and will it work in tandem and the progress because there is an awful lot of companies at the moment that are waiting for permits. There are an awful lot of companies at the moment that have people that are coming here and they are here now for a couple of years and they want their families to come here now and also are having problems trying to get the families in here on the visas. Because I have people here at the moment for four years and he is working here. I have one person, he is here for four years and his wife is a chemist and she can't get in here. For some unknown reason she can't and again a lot of the hospitality sector, if you see the people are coming from the hospitality, they come here whether there are shifts or whatever the skills that they have, they are coming here, they want their families to come here, have the accommodation to bring them here and they can't bring them here. As I say anything that we can do to fast track it and I do recognise that the new portal that you are talking about, but let's hope that it can speed up things even more. Thank you. Mr Minister. I look forward to your support in the implementation of this new system and also I think it is reflective of the success of the Irish economy where we have over 2.8 million people currently employed. We do have skills deficits in areas of expertise and the importance of the employment, not just the general work permits but also the critical skills work permits is essential in terms of how we meet these future needs. But also the fact that the system itself now has been enhanced. Last year we have seen record employment permits being issued over 38,000 since the implementation of the online system and we want to enhance that even further. I know Minister Burke and myself and again just to thank my predecessor Minister Higgins and Minister Neil Richmond also for their efforts in this regard, because with trusted partners, with employers, we can certainly go along with further in order to implement an effective system. Thank you, Mr.