Irish officials are implementing new measures to support the home care and planning sectors, expanding visa requirements for certain nationals and working on a new employment permits system.

Key Points:

  • As of March 10, changes came into effect to the employment permits system to address skills shortages in Ireland’s planning and home care sectors.
    • Specifically, 1,000 general employment permits were added to the quota for Care Worker and Home Carer roles.
    • Authorities also added Town Planning Officer to the Critical Skills Occupations List.
  • In effect that same day, nationals of Eswatini, Lesotho and Nauru are now required to obtain a visa before traveling to Ireland, including a transit visa if transiting through Ireland en route to another destination.
  • Finally, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE) announced a new employment permits system is being developed to transform the way that employment permits are submitted, processed and issued.

Additional Information: As BAL has reported, the Irish government is currently undertaking sweeping changes to key immigration programs, including what the government called the “largest ever expansion to the employment permits system.” Officials recently have increased minimum salary thresholds as well as enacted the Employment Permits Act 2024 as they continue to make significant changes to their employment-based immigration system to modernize and relax certain restrictive policies.

DETE is leading the government’s digital strategy to develop a strong digital ecosystem to increase Ireland’s competitiveness. DETE’s Minister Peter Burke recently published a progress update on the government’s Smart Specialization Strategy, which is meant to address regional innovation gaps and opportunities by accelerating digital transformation to support economic competitiveness.

As part of that effort, the new modern cloud-based employment permits system is being developed by DETE to make the application process easier and more secure, resulting in more streamlined processing. Downtime in the current system should be expected prior to the launch, and additional details on the new system are expected to be provided soon. BAL will continue to monitor developments and will provide more information as it becomes available.

This alert has been provided by the BAL Global Practice Group.

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