When Khaled Mohammad Akar registered the birth of his daughter with the Lebanese authorities three years ago, he was struck with a stark realisation.
“I asked myself, ‘what am I doing?’. I was registering my child as a refugee in Lebanon,” he said. “That’s not her fault. It’s not my fault either, but it’s my responsibility to give her a better future. Not just a better life; a normal life. To be able to travel and work, to have health and safety.”
Born in Lebanon more than three decades ago, Akar is not Lebanese. His grandparents were among the estimated 750,000 Palestinians who were displaced in 1948 following the Arab-Israeli war, also known as the Nakba. In the decades since, the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these displaced people have lived their lives as Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.
Akar was born and grew up in the Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut, home to 18,000 Palestinians and 40,000 Syrians. It was originally established in 1948 for 500 families. About 250,000 Palestinian refugees live across Lebanon today.
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Having spent his childhood in the camp, Akar started facing professional and personal barriers after graduating from university. Palestinians in Lebanon cannot work in key professions and cannot own property. He couldn’t find work after completing a bachelor’s degree in marketing in 2014.
In 2018, he completed a second degree in graphic design and eventually found work with the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
For years, he dreamed of studying or working abroad and in 2021, on the advice of a friend, he set up a profile with a programme called Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB). Two years later, after updating his profile to include fibre optic splicer, Akar received an invitation to apply for a job in Ireland. In April 2024, he arrived in Dublin and now lives in Rathcoole and works as a network field technician.
“I was chasing my dream,” he said. “I was happy but then it became very hard to leave. I was married, I had my daughter, our community is very tight. But I didn’t want to stay in Lebanon so I sacrificed everything to come here. My daughter is 3½ now, she’s the main reason I travelled abroad.”
Akar is one of a small handful of skilled refugees and displaced people who have come to Ireland through TBB since 2023 to work in healthcare, engineering and technology. TBB began operating as a global non-profit organisation in 2018, directly connecting employers in western countries like Canada and Australia, which lacked local talent in specific industries, to skilled migrants who have been forced to flee their countries or have become displaced. The TBB database, which contains more than 130,000 profiles, allows refugees and displaced people to document their skills, educational backgrounds and language abilities.
“The idea was to help refugees across the world to use their skills to migrate,” says Tegwyn Stephenson, head of TBB operations in Ireland and Germany. With funding from the European Commission and some private philanthropy groups, as well as support from the Irish Government, TBB Ireland began operating two years ago. It uses the State’s pre-existing employment permit scheme to bring skilled migrant workers here.
Representatives from the healthcare, engineering, pharmaceuticals, construction and manufacturing industries have all expressed interest in the programme, says Stephenson. However, only a small number have hired individuals through the scheme.
Many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) remain unfamiliar with the permit system when hiring non-EU employees and others are concerned about providing accommodation for the required first month after the employee arrives.
“I just tell them we provide a lot of pre-departure and post-arrival supports and that our candidates are very dedicated and committed,” said Stephenson. “Any person who gets a job offer, we go through all the paperwork with them, explain what life will be like in Ireland. Globally, we have a 93 per cent retention rate among candidates.”
However, she adds that some employers remain reluctant to hire refugees. “We’d love to see more employers looking at this untapped group – refugees have skills and they could be just as skilled as somebody coming from a much more developed country. They just haven’t had access to opportunities.”
Joseph Kilroy, head of policy and public affairs with the Chartered Institute of Building (CMI), says TBB’s programme should be embraced by SMEs “because it takes quite a bit of the administrative burden out of the recruitment process”.
With a skills and labour shortage across the construction industry, “employers are very open to additional streams of labour,” said Kilroy. “While we absolutely welcome the great work going on to make the construction sector more attractive to Irish school entrants (through apprenticeships), there also needs to be an awareness of the composition of non-Irish workers in the construction sector.
“The construction sector needs non-Irish labour to function. We’re at full employment, we need to be open to additional sources of labour if we’re going to carry out all our housing and infrastructure plans.
“Programmes like TBB provide clear pathways, follow a legitimate process and provide skilled labour. It’s just a question of whether they can be mainstreamed via the Government’s interests.”
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said Ireland had opted into the proposal to establish an EU talent-pool platform to match non-EU skilled jobseekers with job vacancies in Europe. First arrivals were welcomed to Ireland in March, 2024, through the EU-funded displaced talent for Europe pilot programme. The proposal will “reduce barriers to international recruitment for EU employers and promote legal pathways and opportunities for jobseekers from third countries”, she said.
The spokeswoman added: “Legal migration plays an essential and very positive role in Ireland’s society and economy and are vital to addressing labour shortages in the economy.”
I didn’t choose to be Palestinian but I was born Palestinian and it’s hard
— Mohammad Sami Shamma
The Government has also approved a new single permit to work and live in Ireland which will streamline the process for non-EEA workers coming here, she said. However, there are no plans in place to introduce additional schemes to bring skilled refugees or displaced people to Ireland, she added.
Mohammad Sami Shamma, who came to Ireland through the programme in 2024 to work as a cable technician, says his life has changed “100 per cent”. He now tests the signals of fibre optic cables and lives in Rathcoole. Also a Palestinian, Shamma says building a life in Lebanon is “very hard in every way”.
“My passport is Lebanese on the outside but inside, it says I’m Palestinian. You have zero rights, you can’t even buy a home. You are not a resident, you are not Lebanese, you are a refugee. It’s very hard to find a job and if you do find work, your salary is half what Lebanese people get. I didn’t choose to be Palestinian but I was born Palestinian and it’s hard.”
Keen to find work abroad, Shamma set up a profile with TBB in 2017 but didn’t hear back for years. When he was eventually contacted, he thought it was a joke but applied for the job and in April 2024, he arrived in Ireland.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance and I’m very happy I was blessed with this opportunity. But I’m suffering here without my wife.” Shamma had to wait 12 months before applying for his wife to join him in Ireland.
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“She’s my partner and we love each other. In Lebanon we were together every day. I promised I’d bring her here this year, but now it will be next year. I miss her. I often think ‘why did I come here, I need my wife beside me. But then I remember the discrimination. When she gets here we can live in peace and when we have kids, they will live a good life.”
Akar agrees that settling in Ireland without family has been difficult but he’s glad he came. TBB “is a win-win situation” for both migrants and European governments, he says. “Refugees are suffering and dying to cross roads, forests and seas to come here. And then the country struggles to deal with illegal immigration. If governments invest in these programmes they can pick the people with potential, who will add value to their country. It’s a win-win situation to take advantage of such programmes to bring people here to work.”
