THE DEPARTMENT OF Social Protection website advertises nearly 1,000 jobs outside of Ireland on its website.
The Department, which has taken over some of the functions of FÁS, the soon-to-be dissolved state employment and training agency, is currently advertising a total of 984 positions, from 130 employers, on the JobsIreland website.
But it has insisted that it does not match vacancies for jobs outside of the EU to people looking for work here in Ireland.
“Advertising vacancies which are based outside of the EU ensures that jobseekers in Ireland are being provided the widest choice of job vacancies and locations available with a view to providing the jobseeker with possible paid employment,” a spokesperson for the Department of Social Protection said.
The government has previously been criticised for actively encouraging emigration after Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty raised the case of an unemployed man in his 60s being offered work as a bus driver in Malta for €250 per week.
One of the vacancies abroad that is currently being advertised is a full-time job working on an excavation machine for an Irish company based in Iraq.
The €35,000-a-year job was advertised on the website by the recruitment agency Connect which admitted it was an unusual position.
It is one of hundreds of jobs abroad that are advertised by the government website with 348 vacancies in Canada, 187 in the UK and 181 in New Zealand currently posted. A job in Kenya and another in Japan are also advertised on the site.
Such jobs may be of interest “to non-Irish nationals who are interested in returning to work in their country of origin”, the Department said.
Ireland’s high unemployment was raised at Leaders’ Questions questions yesterday where the independent TD Mattie McGrath accused the government of not doing enough to incentivise Irish employers to hire.
He said that young people across Ireland have lost the privilege of choice with almost all families impacted by emigration.
Jobs Minister Richard Bruton said a scheme to pay employers a subsidy of €72 a week if they take on a person who has been unemployed for a year will be announced shortly.
He also insisted that unemployment has been falling and that the private sector has been adding 2,000 jobs a month here in Ireland.
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