THE NUMBER OF work permit visas issued in 2012 dropped from the previous year, according to visa specialists.
Visa First said that in 2012, a total of 4,005 work permits were issued to companies in Ireland, down from 5,200 in 2011. It said that 2013 is set to continue the decline, with just 3,276 visas issued to date this year.
Despite this overall year-on-year drop, Visa First says that Dublin is getting a growing percentage of the total work permits year on year.
According to Edwina Shanahan of VisaFirst, there are a variety of reasons for the drop in permits:
There are more people trained up in Ireland in certain areas of expertise so they are now able to fill positions that only non-nationals could fill a few years ago; also while things are picking up in the Capital, this is unfortunately not the same for the rest of the country so the need for permits is reducing.
According the company, Cork is also seeing an increasing share of the work permit grants but at a much smaller scale to Dublin. It saw 417 permits in 2011, 358 in 2012 and 303 in 2013.
When it comes to the different industries that are experiencing skills shortages, VisaFirst found that the science, engineering and technology industries have received over a third of all the permits issued to date this year.
The ICT (information and communications technologies) industry is still top of the board for the numbers of Irish work permit visas issued. The top three players in Ireland when it comes to work permits are Facebook, Google, and IBM.
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