Thread by @wendylyon

Here's the latest installment in my ongoing series, Why The Irish Employment Permit System Is Ridiculous. A thread.

So I recently met someone who works in an industry that the Irish government regards as Very Important. The industry needs workers with a particular, very specialised skill, which few people have. A "critical skill", in the DBEI lingo.

DBEI accepted the need for these workers, and agreed to add them to its Highly Skilled Employments list, eligible for critical skill work permits. But here's the problem.

The entire work permit system is based upon the British statistical classification SOC-2010. Whether or not an employment can be on the Highly Skilled list, or on the Ineligible list for that matter, depends on where it falls in the SOC-2010.

This job, this skill, this specialisation, did not exist in 2010. It is a very recent phenomenon.

No problem, says the DBEI, we'll just slot it into one of the existing SOC-2010 categories. But here's another problem.

Critical Skills permits require a relevant educational qualification. And ... there isn't a relevant educational qualification for this skill. You can't get a degree in it, at least not yet.

And if you could, it wouldn't be a degree that is relevant to the SOC-2010 categories that they've stuck this employment into.

Even apart from the whole system's obsolescence where this job is concerned, they still managed to classify it wrong 🤦‍♀️

And because the entire system is set out in legislation, primary and secondary, there is literally nothing an applicant can do about it. Employment Permits Unit decision makers have no discretion to waive the requirements just because the requirements themselves are unworkable.

The legislation itself will have to be changed in order to allow these permits to be issued. I hate the phrase "not fit for purpose" but it has never been so appropriate as with the Irish employment permit system.

Further reading: wendylyon.wordpress.com/2018/01/23/the…
Sin é.