Enterprise, Trade and Employment | Number of applicants pending approval for work permits and expected delivery of permit requests

To ask the Minister for Enterprise; Trade and Employment the number of applicants for work permits currently awaiting approval; the extent to which it is expected to meet these requests in early date; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

REPLY

As of 20^th February 2023, there are 928 Employment Permit applications in the processing queue. There are 218 awaiting information from the applicant and 6 are ready to issue. The current waiting time in respect of standard new employment permits is seven business days and for trusted partner applications the current waiting time is 4 business days.

Following the implementation of an internal plan of action which increased resources and implemented more efficient methods of processing applications, the Employment Permits Unit has reduced the number of applications awaiting processing from about 11,000 in January 2022 to 928 today, despite further strong demand.  As new staff were trained processing times have fallen from 21 weeks to 1-2 weeks depending on the permit type.  The Department plans to maintain processing times for all applications at approximately this current level, on the assumption that demand remains at current levels.