Following reports from members about delays experienced in obtaining critical skills employment permits for Chartered Accountants, the Institute met with officials from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to discuss ways to reduce the current processing times. Department officials informed us that they are very aware of the delays and are currently implementing a range of measures to reduce the processing times from the current 13-17 weeks to 3-5 weeks.

We know that a significant backlog of employment permit applications for non-EU workers has built up and many submitted during 2021 are still awaiting clearance, despite Chartered Accountants being included on the Department’s critical skills occupation list.  

The Department noted that the delays have been caused in large part by the prioritizing of medical employment permits since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the significant increase in applications for employment permits in 2021 by some 60 percent on 2020, and the implications of the 2020 HSE cyber-attack. The Department is currently taking a range of measures to reduce the current backlog, including increasing permanent capacity of its application-processing unit significantly, recruiting and training staff to deal with the backlog, and working towards a more robust system to reduce processing times with a view to getting them back to 3-5 weeks by March 2022.  The above measures will mean that the processing unit will have three times the capacity by the end of January compared to November 2021.

The Institute also attended a meeting of the Economic Migration Employer User Forum, a joint forum between the Department of Justice, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and employer and business groups where further reassurances were given by officials to remedy the current ‘unacceptable’ backlogs.

The Department recommended that employers consider becoming ‘Trusted Partners’ if they expect over five applications a year in future years. The Trusted Partner initiative removes the requirement for eligible regular users of the service to replicate key information for every application made, thereby easing their own administrative burden when utilising the service, and allowing the Department to deliver a faster turnaround for these applications.  In the meantime, members should take the current timelines of 13-17 weeks for Trusted Partner application into account as part of their recruitment plans.

The Institute welcomes any feedback or comments from members experiencing difficulties with obtaining critical skills employment permits; please email publicpolicy@charteredaccountants.ie.

The Institute will continue to engage with the Department and will keep members updated on all progress.

You can find the Institute’s representations to the Government on public policy issues here, including a letter to Government on processing delays.