The Republic’s already lackadaisy immigration regime was crowbarred open just that bit wider yesterday with the announcement by Minister for Enterprise Damien English to liberalise the permit scheme for non-EEA workers.

Potentially one of the most meaningful decisions for migration policy in recent years, the announcement relates to the General Employment Permit used primarily for attracting third world nationals in less skilled trades (hospitality, haulage and social work)

Ostensibly to counter shortages in the labour market, particularly around truck drivers in the lead up to Christmas, the new system removes the previous quota system in place for non-EEA workers in the haulage industry entirely.

Unsurprisingly welcomed by employers unions as well as piteously soft coverage in the neoliberal press gallery, some of the key points are as follows.

  • Social Workers from non-EEA countries now qualify as ‘Critical Workers’ with a loosening of the regulations around work permits.
  • Special permit schemes are established for various industries (1,000 Horticulture Workers, 500 Meat Deboners, 1500 Meat Processing operatives and 100 Dairy Farm Assistants)
  • Non-EEA applicants from critical trades such as carpentry and construction will be eligible for General Employment Permits, enabling them to work in the country providing they are receiving a salary of above €27,000-€30,000 depending on their employment status and income level.
  • Previously limited to 320 permits annually for HGV drivers from non-EEA nations, these limitations are to be abolished to grapple with the fast developing haulier shortage as witnessed in the UK and increasingly in Ireland. Minister English said that the majority of those 320 permits have already been issued to South Africans.

Expected to be reviewed biannually, the decision has been criticised as being too little too late to mitigate the haulier crisis as well as even adding an additional element of bureaucracy to the process of importing non-EEA workers.

Designed for jobs which cannot be filled with domestic labour, employers are able to apply for the scheme should they fail to fill a role after advertising it over four weeks. Influenced by a 2018 review on migration policy, the move aims to smooth over the labour chasms left in the economy following the initial pandemic period.

In any opposition to myopic migration reform as announced above, the onus must be put on not blaming the benighted individuals imported from the third world to placate the neoliberal GDP machine. As seen in the language school sector or even on the topic of asylum, ill thought out schemes meant to appease employers and short term economic and ideological gain end up having wider societal ramifications.

With automation on the horizon, as well as eye watering levels of structural unemployment and welfare expenditure, insourcing reasonably low skilled aspects of your economy to the third world makes little sense.

While superficially beneficial, the move by Minister English may very end up altering Irish society beyond our wildest expectations. The lessons drawn from covid ought to have been that constructing an economy around transient labour is a fool’s errand. This realisation remains lacking and will continue to do so until the Irish electorate mobilises electorally to at least return a system of semi-sanity to the migration process.

Posted by Ciaran Brennan

6 Comments

  1. By any rational understanding of organised human trafficking operations across the world it is evident there is a huge industry in Ireland both into and passing on their way. Only an idiot would fail to ask why are Irish people in squalor camps like the barbaric degrading slow death camps that is the organised Hostel system and any randomer can come in and get a Hotel private room and a house in 4 months. Only an enemy of one kind or another or a total evil operation would allow such a thing. Only have to look at the amount of foreigners that are here and have no legitimate status bar a small few, all them are illegal aliens and nothing but absolutely nothing can change that fact now or at any time in the future. Paid of their own accord, thousands or hundred of thousands into illegitimate networks, no amount of title of political heads of our state won’t change fact its organised crime not legitimate status. Why wouldn’t someone somewhere, provide schemes to enrich one of the next biggest money rackets post heroin and poppy fields of Afghanistan.

    The biggest failure generation in all our history is our so called Middle Class, post 60’s arrived, educated with no conscience value of anything, collectively act with the lowest self esteem imaginable, never has there been seen, such a lack of assertive and absence of intelligent characteristics. Except perhaps, within our professional criminal class or a new professional treason class, both seem to be excelling in their fields. The rest have little or no regard to the power of their own collective voice, authority as leaders of their community and a voice for and on behalf of the whole nation and people of the country. Most of them are essentially peasants, but with a capital P, in that they do not question authority and have no understanding of their responsibility and position in society, and act as a group, as if their respectability is measured on accepting what anyone in authority tells them. They don’t show any signs of even caring who that or where that authority is or comes from, the occupying global political influences are loaded with such mindless middle class Irish people. Convinced they are not even Irish but Universe children or some made up rubbish. It is not that they are gullible delicate sorts many are very aggressive and arrogant, it is that their mindset is without question, that of an absolute and perfect Peasant and of course, they don’t know this for that’s how being a perfect ‘peasant’ goes. Those who have not taken to becoming a universal child, see their highest understanding of achievement (for the value of their Grandparents and Parents dollar), as trips to New York for shopping. Champagne breakfasts and designer labels and must have latest year and super cars. Actually think in their trinket satisfied mindset this fulfilled the ambitions and hopes of their Irish or Universal family hard earned funds. Fail to understand the value of what they were given, gifted or enabled and haven’t a hope of being able to aspire towards even a basic understanding of ‘better’ . Won’t get it was not just for their arrogant selves but for each and every other person, as part of a people. On que, they will know how to assert on ‘climate change’, no point more bares witness to the ‘universal child’ syndrome than that loaded, peasant whistle. Might even spend hours busy, counting breaths from cows but it is lost on them how ‘our’ top tables are now full of Irish pirates, in control of our public offices, thrown open doors to all aspects of the country welfare and stability.
    Images of them robbing spitting at the very meaning of ‘civilised’ and ‘human’ never mind Irish, Why would Middle educated class be able to see how top tables are full of those who know price of everything but the value of nothing, when they themselves epitomise this lowest characteristic, as a group and not because they are all pirates or rogues but the fact they think as the most perfect peasants, see no value in anything beyond ‘trinkets’.

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  2. (((They))) Live 30/10/2021 at 10:39 am

    It would be just awful if wages rise for the working class

    Ireland economic model will destroy the country, push down wages while pushing up rents/house prices, while replacing us with foreigners, the high rents/house prices makes new family formation difficult, suppressing the Irish birth rate

    STOP voting for Fianna Gael, STOP voting for Labour and Sein Fein

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  3. Ireland is following a model of ever increasing housing costs & stagnant real wages. Uk hauliers earn 10 % more than their Irish colleagues . No mention of that in the Irish media. Why ?

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  4. Liam Sherry 31/10/2021 at 2:45 pm

    Where are these foreigners going to live? Where are they going to be treated when sick? Its strange when English and his clique are planning to shut the A+E in Navan he then stuffs the place with foreigners.
    Navan is un recognisable, brand new houses
    handed out to foreign nationals and our own on a f###ing housing list .
    The mans a disgrace a traitor.

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  5. The organised and deliberate dispossesion of the native Irish carries on apace. Bound hand and foot to supranational masters ,Ireland does whatever it’s told,without even a whimper.

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  6. The ghost of Paddy P 01/11/2021 at 4:11 pm

    The EU has a population of 445 million people, if an Irish business can’t attract workers from that pool then its pretty obvious that the pay and conditions offer are just not good enough. the clowns at IBEC understand fully the theory of supply and demand. but they refuse to admit that it applies to labour just like any other commodity, it applies to housing and rents too BTW

    On a site like the Burkean, the Left gets most ire, but to be honest maybe our real problem is the fake right

    Reply

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