Every week, Kunle, who is from Nigeria, drives around Co Clare visiting the homes of people who are physically disabled or who are old and infirm. He helps them get out of bed, washes them, dresses them, prepares their breakfast, shops for them and, just as importantly, talks with them. “I feel happy if they are happy,” he says. He works long hours, but he’s proud of his work. He likes his employers. He likes the people he assists. He’s good at his job.
But he has few friends here – it’s hard to make friends in Ireland, he says – and his wife and two young children are back home. He earns below the €30,000 threshold that would allow a spouse to come to Ireland under the current general permit system. He sends much of the money he makes home. He spends his time off video-calling his family, though it’s hard to keep young children interested in a video call, he says. He watches films alone. “I text my wife: ‘I wish you were here watching this with me’.” He has been doing this for over four years.
Many of the people caring for Ireland’s most vulnerable are here on their own, separated from family. In 2022 and 2023, more than 70,000 employment permits were issued to people from countries outside the EU.
There are two categories of work permit. One is a critical skills permit that pertains to specialised positions such as doctors, nurses, ICT workers and engineers. Around half of the 70,000 are on general employment permits. The categories of employment deemed eligible include chefs, large goods vehicle drivers, meat processing workers, fishery and agriculture workers, healthcare assistants, care workers and home care workers like Kunle.
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People who have come here with a “critical skills” permit are allowed to bring their families with them immediately. The requirements for people who are on a general employment permit, are more onerous. Sectors lobby to have needed jobs added to the list of positions eligible under the scheme, but often the people they recruit do not earn the €30,000 a year required to bring a spouse into the country. That figure rises up to €40,000 if they wish to bring in even one child.
Even if they meet that figure, these workers must wait a year before they can apply to have a family member join them. The application process can take another year. Many people end up waiting for up to seven years.
“A lot of people are being recruited and being told they can have their families with them and when they get here there’s a very different reality for them,” says Edel McGinley, director of the Migrant Rights Centre (MRCI). “We estimate that about half of all GEP [general employment permit] holders are seeking to reunite with a spouse and/or children.”
Kunle underestimated the complexity of the system. In 2022 and 2023, he took as much overtime and extra work as he could to push his income to €40,000, well above the income required for reunification. He then discovered that his application had to be based on the salary level in his basic contract. Overtime could not be considered. Subsequently, his employers agreed to hire his wife if she got the correct qualification. Although she managed to get a work permit, her residency was denied. He has been renting a two-bed apartment in the hope of having his family with him, but is losing hope.
His children are five and seven. “Each time I speak to them, they always say ‘Dad, when do I come to your house?’ ... They don’t know what the distance looks like ... They want to play with you, they want to touch you ... It’s really difficult for me.”
He likes the job and he likes Ireland. He would like a future for his family here. “The elderly people in this country, they need us,” he says. “In this job you need to be someone who is creditable and someone that your service user can trust ... I’ve already built a bond with my service users. I’m happy with my job.”
Elish Kelly, a senior researcher with the ESRI, shows me a chart that maps the movement of people coming in and out of Ireland in recent decades. Anyone coming here under the permit system, she says, is coming in response to skills shortages that have developed since our economy started growing again in 2014. The number of people who are willing to come from the European accession states – a major source of immigration during the Celtic Tiger years – has dropped hugely, mainly due to economic growth in their own countries. Many of the people who came in those years returned. So Ireland needs people from outside the EEA. She also notes that though skills shortages wax and wane, in the long term, as the population ages, we will need more workers from abroad. “We’re not the only country in that situation. We’re competing with other countries for excess labour that might exist in the rest of the world.”
In order to use the work permit system, employers have to show that they have advertised within Ireland and Europe for those roles to no success. There’s also a 50 per cent limit on the proportion of employees that can be hired from outside the EEA by any one company. Tadhg Daly, chief executive of Nursing Homes Ireland, which represents the private nursing home sector, says people shouldn’t underestimate how hard it is to recruit in a country that is reaching full employment. “The people who are working in our care services, working in nursing homes, are skilled, trained, qualified professionals, who have a very difficult job.”
Many of the people who come here are, in fact, overqualified. Shiji Joseph, who is from Kerala in India, is a qualified nurse, but works here as a healthcare assistant in a nursing home. In order to practise as a nurse in Ireland she needs to pass an exam, but is finding it hard to find time to study alongside her job. Joseph previously worked in Saudi Arabia, but she thought that getting her two children a good education would be easier in Ireland. It was only after being recruited to come here that she realised her family would be unable to join her.
She lives with another healthcare worker from Kerala. On her days off she watches sport and she gardens and calls home as much as she can. On the days she’s working she does 12-hour shifts and it’s impossible to call her family because of the time difference. “They are already sleeping.”
Recently her salary finally passed the threshold required for reunification with at least one family member, but that only means she can start the application process. That typically takes a year. She has already been separated from her family for two years. Many of her colleagues are in a similar situation. “My colleagues are from India, the Philippines and Georgia ... They can’t bring their families here. The system needs to change. I like my work and I am proud of it. But we struggle.”
Her children are frequently upset about the distance.
As we talk over the phone she frequently pauses. I realise after a while that she’s trying not to cry. “This is painful. My heart is in pain. That is why sometimes I don’t give an answer. Our work is mentally draining and physically we are tired. We want to give our care from the bottom of our hearts. We are caring for your parents like they are our parents, people with dementia. We care for them, but we also expect care for our own families ... I respect Irish people ... They’re kind people. I know that today or tomorrow, we’ll get our rights. They are mothers and fathers too and they understand our feelings. We don’t want to be waiting too long.”
There have been some positive changes for people on a general employment permit. Since May 15th, spouses of permitholders are allowed to work. And under the new Employment Permit Act, which came into force last month, employees are no longer tied for five years to the employer that sponsored their permits. “That was probably the number one factor that led to the exploitation of workers on permits,” says Bill Abom, deputy director with the MRCI.
It’s very difficult. You don’t have the same access to your own family to support them emotionally as a father
Last year, Neale Richmond, then minister of state for employment, announced that salaries for jobs requiring general employment permits would rise to meet or go beyond Department of Justice thresholds for reunification with a spouse. That decision has since been delayed when it comes to healthcare assistants and home workers because employers say they can’t afford the increases under current contracts with the HSE.
The MRCI’s position is that there shouldn’t be a threshold for family reunification. “Anybody in full-time employment, regardless of their earnings should have the right to be reunited with their family,” says McGinley.
Nurudeen Oyewole is a former journalist who is now a social care worker in Swords, Co Dublin. He came to Ireland from Nigeria in 2019 to pursue a master’s in entrepreneurship at the National College of Ireland. He was volunteering helping homeless people when a friend suggested he would be good at social care work so he did a postgradute course in IT Carlow. There is a huge need for employees in the sector. “I would say quite a number of people [he works with] are actually non-Irish, a rough estimate of probably 50 per cent ... But the demand still outweighs the supply. So I think it is a continuous challenge.”
He works with people who have intellectual and physical disabilities. He talks about the responsibilities of the position, the way he must liaise with multidisciplinary teams of doctors, physiotherapists and social workers. He loves his job. He disagrees with the idea that it isn’t “critical”.
“I work in a respite service,” he says. “Every few days, a new set of residents comes and you’re providing respite services for hundreds. Some of them have two or three in their families who can now go on a holiday or do things for themselves ... [Our work] affects society at large.”
Because Oyewole is on a general employment permit and earns below the threshold for reunification, his wife and three children are still in Nigeria.
“It’s very difficult,” he says. “You don’t have the same access to your own family to support them emotionally as a father. This year, my second child was celebrating her ninth birthday ... when I was talking to her, I said, ‘What do you want for your birthday?’ and she said, ‘The only thing I want is for you to be here with me’. It was a very powerful statement, for a nine-year-old, telling me how much she felt about my absence in her life.”
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He keeps busy. He volunteers. He’s involved in the MRCI’s campaign for family reunification. Much of his time is spent talking with his family online. “Before you blink twice the day is gone and you go back to work.”
How does he relax? “I go walk in the mall or a restaurant or the park or the beach. You see families and children running around and everybody laughing and you wish that you were also in their circumstances. When you do not have those things, it brings about loneliness ... How do you reconcile all of this? If you are concerned with the general wellbeing of your citizens, also look at the general wellbeing of those who are looking after them. The people doing these jobs also deserve to be happy.”
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