The spouses of 10,000 non-nationals employed in this country are to get automatic work permits from next month under a new scheme agreed at yesterday's Cabinet meeting. The Tánaiste, Ms Harney, is due to announce details of the scheme today. It will apply to limited groups of professionals from outside the EU in healthcare, building, IT and research, who are employed under fast-track "work visas" designed to ease specific bottlenecks in the Irish labour market, writes Barry O'Halloran
The biggest single group to benefit will be the 5,000 Filipino nurses employed in Irish hospitals. While the spouses of the large number of these workers who are married are theoretically entitled to live here, they have no automatic right to work, and have thus been effectively prevented from living here.
The Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) and the Association of Directors of Nursing and Midwifery have been lobbying the Government since last year to grant the spouses automatic work permits. They fear that the current system could force many of the nurses to leave. Other countries, including the UK, allow their spouses to work.
It is understood that the scheme will come into effect next month. It will also cover 3,000 IT workers and 1,200 construction professionals such as architects, planners and engineers. Between 700 and 800 workers, who are either involved in research and development (R&D), or who have been transferred to Irish branches of multinationals from other locations within the same company, will also be covered.
The Cabinet signed off on the scheme yesterday. Ms Harney brought it to Government in response to lobbying from the nurses' groups, and because she wanted to make the Republic as attractive as possible to professionals in IT and high-level research.
It will be an extension of the "work visa" programme that her Department, Enterprise, Trade and Employment, introduced in 1999. Under this scheme, any non-EU national with skills in areas where there was a specific labour shortage, and who had the offer of a job in the Republic, could get their local Irish embassy to stamp their passports with a work visa. EU nationals have an automatic right to live and work here.
Under the standard work permit system, employers have to advertise the job here unsuccessfully for four weeks before they can bring in workers from outside the EU, or the associated European Economic Area (EEA).
Last year, the Department issued 47,500 work permits, including the 10,000 under the visa scheme. The majority of these were renewals. According to its figures, there are 100,000 non-nationals working here, 50,000 from outside the EU. Around 17,000 of these are from the 10 Eastern European states due to join the EU in May.
Ireland is the only one of 15 EU members that has agreed to allow citizens from these states the normal rights to live and work here from next May, in line with the EU treaties. Ms Harney has indicated that as a result, fewer non-EU citizens will get Irish work permits.