Up to very recently, we had a big, bolted and locked gate across employment in this State. It had a "Keep Out" sign on it, "Only Irish need apply", together with symbolic warnings of "Beware of dog", "Poisoned land", "Trespassers will be prosecuted" and so on.

The idea that the big, locked immigration gate saved Irish jobs from being stolen by would-be hoards of immigrants to our failed economy is very questionable. What kept them out was surely less the policy to keep them out than their own judgment that there was nothing much worth coming here for.

Now the old, forbidding gate is being slowly re-invented as a gateway to employment, to skilled positions from software to town planning to nursing. But the now-open gate still has quite a few of the old signs hanging from it, which leaves people passing by it quite confused.

A Polish software engineer in Dublin told me about the petty frustrations and policy inconsistencies which show how far we have yet to go to achieve a real immigration policy.

A person from outside the European Economic Area (EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) can only work legally here if his or her employer has secured a work permit for the position from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

The employee has to seek renewal of the permit each year. On the sixth renewal by the same employer, the employee can get a permanent work permit. So far so good, you might think, except that in a critical market like IT, few enough people stay at one employer for six years. Because the work permit is for the employer, a change of employment by the non-EEA national in Ireland requires a new permit. This is a needless barrier to flexibility in the labour force.

Alongside the rules for work permits, permission to remain in the State beyond 90 days still has to be sought continually. A person must sign on at special Garda stations at each renewal, a waste of a lot of time for skilled immigrants.

A new system to encourage immigration to short-staffed areas was introduced last spring, dispensing with work permits for certain employees, facilitating job moves and giving two-year rather than one-year permits.

But, typical of bureaucratic results when inconsistent policy directions are compromised on rather than decided between, the new rules do not apply to existing permit holders, who must continue with one-year registrations, renewals and so on.

A note from the Department of Justice sets out the good news that people who have been granted permission to remain in the State by virtue of being a spouse of an Irish national will no longer need a work permit. It emphasises, "the mere fact that a person is married to an Irish citizen" is not enough. You have to have been granted permission to remain in the State.

And so, the Department cautions, in what must be very confusing advice to immigrants, "a person in this position should not work even if a work permit has been issued, but should first seek the permission of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to remain in the State".

It appears that our immigration and work permit systems - for they are two, rather than one, as should be the case - are capable of issuing permits to people to work here who have no permission to be here.

The skilled immigrant we want can only bring in a spouse and family after one year here. We even have the absurd situation where a non-EU driving licence is valid for only six months, but it takes nine months to get a driving test, snookering the immigrant driver.

There is a choice to be made towards immigrants - do we suffer them temporarily or do we design rules that allow them maximum possible freedom, including the freedom to stay and settle here?

If our system signals temporary sufferance, then the people who will come will be transient twenty-somethings who don't care much about settling down. Older people who are more experienced, earn more, have families, wish to own houses and have some stability will not be attracted by a half-hearted welcome and unthought-out policy, the halting-failte we offer. The labour force needs all sorts - the settled as well as the footloose.

Like the "Keep Out" signs when there was nothing to come in for, a lot of the rules give the appearance of control, but achieve no real public good. Some are under review now, thankfully. A wholesale re-design for today's economic goals is needed. New rules, and fewer rules, for a new era.

Oliver O'Connor is editor of the monthly publication, Finance. Email: ooconnor@indigo.ie