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AWARD-WINNING ANIMATION studio Brown Bag Films has called for “less restrictive” rules around foreign worker permits to help tackle the shortage of skilled staff for its growing business.
The Dublin-based studio, which has won several Emmys and was Oscar nominated for the short animation Give Up Yer Aul Sins, made the comments in response to a review of the current employment permit scheme by the Department of Business.
Brown Bag said that there are currently “not enough qualified experienced candidates” in the Irish or European Economic Area (EEA) pool to work in the “rapidly growing” animation industry here.
“Within the animation and gaming industry, there is evidence that both industry and education are adapting curriculums, however the time taken for this to result in a large pool of talent does not meet immediate needs or needs within the next two years,” it added.
Brown Bag Films said that it was issued with 31 work permits for non-EEA staff last year, the most of any firm in its industry.
It hired a total of 107 new staff in 2017, meaning that more than 30% of new hires were employed from outside the EEA through the permits system.
The company pointed out that a number of relevant animation roles – such as art directors, location designers and character designers – were recently added to the ‘highly skilled eligible occupations’ list.
This list features high-skilled jobs for which permits can be granted as there is a shortage in respect to qualifications, experience or skills in Ireland.
However the studio added that it requires more than 60 various animation roles, many of which are not included on the list, and its average time to hire staff has “increased significantly in the last 12 months” due to a lack of candidates in Ireland and the EEA.
Brown Bag, which also produces children’s TV shows such as Doc McStuffins and Octonauts, suggested that the list should be extended to cover more technical roles or the salary threshold for a critical skills work permit should be reduced.
A critical skills permit is designed to attract highly skilled people into the Irish labour market with the aim of encouraging them to take up permanent residence in the State.
However, the studio said it would need to offer a salary of more than €60,000 to meet the criteria for a critical skills permit, a sum which it added was “too high”.
“We struggle to fill mid-level positions from within the EEA and we cannot meet the threshold of €60,000 for these level roles.”
The studio added that the permit system should give preference to fast-growth industries or those that are being specifically targeted by the IDA and other groups to come to Ireland.
Permit consultation
Brown Bag filed one of 30 submissions for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation review of its various employment permit schemes for non-EEA staff.
In its consultation documents, the department said that the focus of the employment permit regime in recent years has been “to ensure that the skills requirements of enterprise in the State can be met through economic migration where necessary”.
It added that as the State approaches full employment there have been calls to open up the employment permit scheme to lower-skilled workers.
However there are concerns that economic migration is not a sustainable long-term solution to skills and labour shortages.
In its response to the review, business lobby group Ibec said the current employment system generally worked well in responding to shortages in the labour market.
The organisation pointed out that the number of employment permits has been increasing in recent years, with over 9,000 new permits issued in 2017. It added that the IT and health and welfare sectors accounted for three-quarters of all new permits.
However it also called for some rules to be relaxed as “the gap between what can be locally supplied and what needs to be hired in continues to grow significantly”.
Ibec recommended that non-EEA international students who graduate from third-level courses be allowed to work in Ireland for longer than the current 24-month cap.
The lobby group also called for the government to look at models like Canada or New Zealand’s low-skilled foreign worker schemes to help deliver more recruits to industries like food processing, hospitality, agriculture and healthcare.
“For some sectors, the situation is so critical that it is impact the ability of companies to plan for expansion or meet day-to-day operational demands,” its submission said.
The food processing industry, for example, competed with the construction industry for workers but “due to low margins … (could not) match construction wages”, Ibec said.
Business case
In it submission, the Irish Hotels Federation (IHF) also called for a less-restrictive permit regime.
The organisation, which represents over 1,000 businesses, said hotels “struggle to compete for EEA workers with other more profitable, less labour intensive sectors such as IT and construction”.
“Where an employer has advertised a position on a national and European-wide area and is unable to fill the position they should then be eligible to apply for a permit,” it added.
Like Brown Bag, the IHF also had issues with the pay threshold for critical skills permits, which for the hospitality industry meant a minimum salary of €30,000.
It said that the threshold impacted employers’ wage costs, created disgruntlement with existing staff and bore no resemblance to industry norms.
However not all submissions were in favour of liberalising the State’s policies around work permits.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), the umbrella group for unions across the island, said some of the main issues with permits were protecting migrant workers from exploitation and guarding the labour market from “downward pressure” on pay and conditions.
“Paradoxically, this pressure has often been highest on citizens of the EU15 member states working and living in Ireland,” it said.
ICTU added that it is concerned about the “ever-increasing reliance” of employers on work permits to fill skills gaps and labour shortages, and that there is a danger employers may exaggerate their need for additional labour.
“The phrase ‘attraction and retention issues’ (from employers) is a polite euphemism for pay and conditions,” it said.
“If sectors become reliant on migrant labour paid at or about the minimum wage, they run the risk of downgrading the pay and employment conditions associated with their sector.”
The ICTU said that many people are still unemployed, underemployed and participating in activation programmes in Ireland and across Europe.
It said that these groups should be exhausted before more job categories are removed from the ineligible list, while it also called on the government to provide better data on the number of workers currently on language-school related visas.
Written by Sarah Harford and posted on Fora.ie
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The ability to change property tax + or – 15%…guess which one
A smart county will lower the tax to encourage inward investment and property purchases.
….. or……. they will all raise the tax together….
Wonder which it will be.
Depends who you vote for then, doesn’t it? If you don’t like a councillor’s decision on the matter then you vote them out. As these are local elections, it’ll be much easier to hold them accountable for broken promises than TDs. Similarly, people are more likely to vote for independent candidates or take a chance on candidates in local elections which again would increase accountability and choice for people.
OK I agree with this in principle but am concerned that the already top-heavy local council hierarchy will remain with highly paid local council employees being shuffled around instead of being made redundant. Can’t upset the unions can we Phil ?
I’d tend to agree that we need to see exactly what sort of reductions this means from a staff level perspective, especially in those merged councils. Surely there are opportunities for reductions there.
they can be redeployed anywhere within the public sector so if the dept of education or social protection is in need of people, they can go work there instead.
That’s fine Sandra and if people can be gainfully employed elsewhere that would be brilliant. The key word here is “gainfully”. I have seen so many times, public servants sitting on their hands waiting for retirement in a “job” of which they have no knowledge or interest. I feel sorry for them but at the same time, it’s a complete and utter waste of taxpayers money – money that could be used elsewhere much more effectively.
It’s still based on the old idea of counties. This tribalism is not good for the country. I don’t see why we can’t just scrap counties altogether and come up with a system that balances population with geography. We’ll still support the counties in the GAA, but why do we have, for example, one administrative unit in Leitrim representing 30,000, one in Meath representing 180,000 and 2 in Cork representing 480,000?
It’s an archaic system Brian. While these changes are welcome in my opinion, I wish some politician had the balls to tackle it more extensively.
don’t forget we also have a town council for for every little town with more than one pub…
Alien8, this bill will abolish those town councils. As for councils based on county boundaries; that’s a fair point but I think the size of the council reflects the population discrepancies with bigger councils for bigger population spreads.
That’s true ignoreland. However, if you take a look at my home county of Meath. Laytown, Bettystown and Mornington are part of Meath. They would be better served under an administration run from Drogheda. Likewise, Clonee would be better served along with Blanchardstown and Mulhuddart. Where I currently live, Sligo, Manorhamilton is served by Carrick on Shannon, despite the fact you have to leave Leitrim to get from one to the other. Manorhamilton would be better served from Sligo. The counties were established as districts for military and taxation purposes. We need new districts based on geographic, demographic and economic reasons and to cut down on duplication and administration.
I don’t think you can ever complain about having to leave Leitrim. Ever.
Fair point, Brian!
Merging Limerick councils is an absolutely brilliant idea. Having two up to this point has contributed hugely to the decline in the city centre as the county council kept allowing big retail parks just over the city border
The lack of business has nothing to do with the cost and availability of parking which would be under the remit of the city council? Nothing to do with the fact that the few free places to park around the city are dwindling as the council mark them with lines and hire more tax gatherers/traffic wardens? There are many reasons to merge Limerick councils but this is hardly one of them.
While these are welcome steps, 31 one local authorities is still way too many in a small country. We could probably survive quite well with about 15. Every county does not need it’s own council.
More tax hikes on the way Phil ???
The Bull Hogan should put the road tax on to the fuel, But no lets make it hugely complicated and do it that way instead.
And not one single person will lose their job.
Alot of Councillors tend to be close to the retirement age and would be going anyway… just not being replaced this time round is where the numbers will be saved.
A lot of councillors will lose their positions, for most of them it’s not a full time job anyway.
I hope the urban councillors take a case against this erosion of our local democracy. I get the feeling that the FG leadership would like to run the country as a dictatorship rather than a democracy!
This is one if the few good proposals brought forward by this administration.it should lead to a streamlining of local govt. There are town councils for towns of 250 people or less in some cases which is just ridiculous and costly. One county council is enough in most cases. People keep saying we have too many politicians and yet when they propose to reduce the number, it’s an erosion of democracy?
Whats the betting these useless so called local public servants that will get their walking papers wont also walk away with a huge pay off and pensions,all paid for on the backs of the taxpayers
this is probably what will happen! it happened before! A sense of entitlement!
This sounds like one of the worst idea’s Ive ever heard. What is with this government and thinking that giving more work to less people makes things “More efficient”?? It DIDNT work with SUSI, and it wont work here. All this sounds like is another scheme to save money, by taking away peoples town councils. STOP harassing us.
It will work with SUSI. Having multiple authorities duplicating loads of things is very inefficient. Student grants is one example and water is another. The setup of the driver licence agency is another welcome improvement. Having multiple councils all doing these things is madness. We don’t do change well in Ireland generally.
114 councils in a country of 4.6 million is your idea of efficient? Really? OK, some people don’t like the government but this is a good move. It will save the tax payers money and will make local authority more accountable.
In France they have 36,500 communes with local government!
And do you think Irish people would be happy with French tax rates to fund that level of bureaucracy Francis? They have two levels of property taxes as far as I know.
…and the last time France posted a national budget surplus was in 1972!
Mike, take the apostrophe from “idea’s” and stick it after the I in “Ive” please. There are other apostrophe gaffes, btw.
There needs to be a major review of current council staffing levels. I have heard from several council office workers that they can’t be sacked and all the pay cuts dealt out to the public service have been cancelled out by their automatic increments in pay every year which are NOT performance related. There can’t be immunity to redundancy in cases of poor performance. Haddington Road forced a few extra hours onto these people which is pointless if the quality isn’t there. Merging inefficient councils just makes a bigger inefficient council. No change
I thought this bill was already in place!
Better late than never I suppose.
More pain from the minister for “couldn’t give a shite about people”
What pain exactly?
Dermot – please don’t ask for facts. Some people just want to moan!
@ Jim walsh and Dermot Lane. If your too thick to figure it out then let me fill you in, hogan is the same Bo***x whos bringing in water meters and the household tax, probably the minister who is implementing more hardship on his own that any other minister, so i reserve the right to “Moan” as you call it, i didnt vote the P***k in so i have every right to dislike what he stands for.
Yes john but don’t let your hatred of the man stop you from recognising that this is a good proposal which if done properly will save millions for the taxpayers. Or would you prefer we continue to waste this money just because it’s Hogan proposing it? The only pain felt here will be felt by the politicians who will lose their place on the councils and that can’t be a bad thing.
My guess is that the populace would reject this proposed legislation if it were put before them as a Referendum. Let us recall that the Referendum on the right of the Oireachtas to hold Enquiries was rejected out of pure spite and the recent Referendum on the abolition of the Seanad which would have removed sixty simpering and costly Senators was also lost.
This proposal on Local Government is a wonderful start on Political reform and if I have a criticism it would be about it not going far enough!
It’s called democracy mr dickie
Martin
Pray tell me what is it that we call democracy? If you read my contribution I simply made an observation on the decisions of the electorate in two recent Referenda! Why have you inferred that I have some difficulty in understanding that this was democracy? Pray tell.
People were given a choice and voted against that’s democracy not spite you little narrow minded man
I hope the urban councillors take a case against this erosion of our local democracy. I get the feeling that FG would rather we were a dictatorship than a democracy!
‘There will be a devolving powers to local authorities’ – sloppy writing.
A bit unfair, Tony. Just use the Tip/Correction option.
While I welcome these proposal I think we could have gone a lot further. We will still have over 900 local councillors.
To be honest I think Ireland could do with around 9-10 regional authorities of around 40-50 members each. They could be setup to have roughly similar population level although Dublin would probably still have a greater size than the rest of them so it might still have to be split in some way. This would reduce the inequality in sizing as currently exists within the county council system. It would also give the councils a wider brief rather than their own narrow county interest.
Finally as time goes by more power could be devolved to the authorities which would allow our national TDs not to operate as super-county councillors and let them concentrate on truly national matters.
In fact we’ve had 8 Regional Authorities (Midlands, South-East etc.) for almost 20 years (bit smaller in size of membership than those you suggest Jim) but they’ve had what few powers they were given to coordinate public services, planning and EU support eroded to a bare minimum. Now they’ve been abolished.
Why are people – notably the media – simplistically obsessing about the reduction in the numbers of Councillors instead of the key issue of devolved power versus centralisation. Virtually since independence, our version of local government (actually ”local administration” is the more correct term in our case) has been the weakest and most limited system in Europe (which is quite a feat considering that we’ve recently heard that our Parliament is also the weakest). Addressing this issue and exotic notions such as good governance, accountability, providing the basis for bottom-up economic and community development etc. in order to properly represent the views and serve the needs of local communities is how this ”radical reform” will ultimately be judged.
Something seriously needs to be done with North Tipperary. The County Manager and the Elected Councillors and in particular the Planning Department are an absolute joke.
‘Accountability ‘ oh that old chestnut.
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