The scale of imminent rises in the minimum salaries that must be paid to workers hired under the State’s work permit scheme has caught some employers off guard, according to a leading immigration consultant.
Colm Collins, a director at Fragomen, said the timescale for the changes to the scheme will also cause issues for some companies, potentially sparking a rush to submit renewals in early January before the new rules take effect. The overhaul was announced on December 20th, allowing four weeks before the increased salaries take effect, a portion of which will have been covered by the Christmas period.
The Government’s decision to expand the permit scheme, which covers the recruitment of workers from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) for sectors in which there are staff shortages, came after a lengthy public consultation conducted by Department of Enterprise and Employment. The changes being implemented involve higher salary thresholds for permit holders and see 43 new roles included within the system. Some salaries will rise by more than a quarter.
Announcing the modifications earlier this month, Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail Neale Richmond said they would benefit businesses and wider society by allowing for vacancies to be filled in areas where there were particular issues. He said the pay thresholds across a range of sectors were being increased “to recognise this contribution and ensure we are offering good quality employment to these workers”.
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Mr Collins said the review of the system is welcome and changes to the thresholds, which had not been increased for nine years, were overdue. But he suggested the scale of the increases, when coupled with the four weeks’ notice provided, has caused concerns for some of the firm’s clients and is likely to generate more when employers return to the office in early January.
“We knew there were going to be new additions to the critical skills list and more opportunities to get employment permits for other businesses, that had been talked about for quite some time.
“The salary aspect was long overdue some sort of update. Nine years is a really long time, something had to change, especially with the cost of living and cost of doing business.
“But the gravity of the changes that they’ve brought in for general employment permits probably caught us and others off guard, and only giving businesses less than a month to take account of those changes, I think that’s the thing that probably surprised us the most.”
Fragomen works with a wide range of companies across different sectors but Mr Collins highlighted the example of graduates from outside the EEA brought to work in the Republic on the basis of their specialist language skills.
“There are a lot of people we deal with in that space and the minimum salary threshold has been €27,000. As of January 17th it goes up to €34,000 and I think those changes have been sprung [on them] right before Christmas but I think we are going to see a lot of difficulty in the new year.”
He said he anticipated some companies would seek to obtain renewals in advance of the January 16th deadline and others would adapt to the higher rates “but it’s hard to see how some people won’t be negatively affected by this”.
The changes in a small number of other sectors, including meat processing and horticulture, are proportionately larger, with the minimum annual salary required increasing from just under €23,000 to €30,000.
The Government’s stated intention is to increase the minimum to €39,000 in most sectors by January 2025 and in the lowest paid areas, including healthcare assistants and home carers, by the start of the following year.
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