Immigration into Ireland: background, policy responses, outlook

Note: this is the first draft of a paper which is part of a joint project under Commission budget line B3-4102 on 'Governance Models and New Migration Patterns', a joint study of aspects of Italian, Spanish and Irish immigration policies. Our partners are Instituto Psicanalitico per le Richerche Sociali (Rome), Osservatorio sulle Politiche Pubbliche, Università La Sapienza (Rome) and Equipe de Analisi Politica, Universita Autònoma de Barcelona (Catalunya).

1. Ireland – from Emigration to Immigration

2. The Regulatory System

3. Immigration and the Labour Market

4. Immigrant Labour Policies

5. Concluding Remarks

List of Charts

Ireland - from emigration to immigration

1.1 The Modernisation of the Country

Until the recent past, Ireland was a country of emigration. From the Great Famine of 1845-47 to the 1950s, the natural increase in the population was continually offset by out-migration on a scale which was relatively higher than any other European country, leading to an almost continuous decline in the population for more than a century (chart 1)

The adoption at the end of the 1950s of new economic policies[1] based on the encouragement of foreign direct investment (FDI) from the multinational corporate sector led to a turnaround in the decade which followed, with increased job creation, a dramatic drop in out-migration and a consequent rise in the marriage rate.

Ireland’s adherence to the European Community in 1973 even led to net in-migration, for the first time in modern history, although this was largely explained by the return of experienced Irish migrants, usually with families, to meet specific skills shortages in the Irish economy (chart 2).

Emigration slowed down but did not cease and immigration by non-Irish persons remained relatively insignificant. With the increase in the marriage rate in the 1960s and the net immigration in the 1970s just referred to, the population grew by almost 22% between 1961 and 1981 (chart 3).

In the 1980s, the painful effects of the post-EC re-structuring of much traditional Irish industry (used to a protectionist environment and lacking economies of scale), combined with unwise economic management, led to a substantial loss of jobs, at the very time when the baby-boom generation of the 1960s was emerging onto the job market. The consequence was a dramatic rise in unemployment and and an even more dramatic return to high emigration rates. In 1988-89 alone, 70,600 persons, or approximately 2% of the population, left (chart 4).

The 1990s – a period of dramatic change.

The 1990s saw the emergence of a very different Ireland. The introduction of a largely successful policy of peaceful industrial relations and joint wage bargaining through a mechanism involving all of the social partners, based in part on the German model, was a key feature. The major investment in education which the State had made in the 1970s and 1980s began to pay off in ever-greater numbers of well-educated workers. Fiscal and other investment incentives (in particular, zero, and later very low, export taxes) made Ireland a very attractive location within the European Union, especially for such sectors as IT and pharmaceuticals, and led to a major increase in foreign direct investment. Tight government fiscal and monetary policy, partly in preparation for entry into the euro, kept inflation low. While it has been argued that workers paid the highest price as the burden of taxation shifted from the corporate sector to the individual employee, there can be no doubting that the results were impressive.

The ‘Celtic Tiger’ boom which has characterised Ireland from the mid-1990s is not a chimera. Real growth rates in the late 1990s, at more than 8% of GDP, were the highest in the OECD area; indeed they exceeded any other member State by a factor of more than 2. Moreover, the economic boom did generate new jobs. In the decade 1991-2000, almost half a million new jobs were added to the Irish economy, an expansion of 43% in the total labour force (see chart 5). To quote the International Labour Organisation:

The Irish Department of Finance, in its National Development Plan (NDP) for 2000-2006, is similarly upbeat in its comments on the years 1994-1999:

The latest bulletin of the Department of Finance (March 2001) indicates that unemployment is now at 3.9%. The Department of Finance estimates that GDP grew by 10.7% in 2000 while GNP grew by 8.6%. For 2001, it estimates that GDP will grow by 8.8% while GNP will grow by 7.4%[4]. While problems of social exclusion, literacy, and poor education and training still exist, there is no longer a substantial reserve of unemployed persons waiting to enter the labour market.

There is no reason to foresee a major downturn in projected economic and employment indicators in the short to medium term. One note of caution to be sounded concerns the state of the US economy. A serious downturn would have multiple consequences for Ireland as US investment would slow down, new projects would be placed on hold and export growth would suffer. Other short-term crises such as the current Foot and Mouth epidemic in Britain (with one case in the Republic so far) may also cause difficulties but these are unlikely to derail the economy to any serious extent.

Economic growth and the labour force.

Four traditional sources of additional workers in an expanding economy may be identified

Ireland traditionally had a low level of female participation in the paid labour force. This was reinforced by societal attitudes and even offical policy until the relatively recent past[5]. In the past ten years, however, there has been a considerable change; Ireland now finds itself in the mid-range of EU member States with almost half of all adult women in the paid labour force (CSO Quarterly National Household Survey Fourth Quarter 2000).

It should be noted that the Irish situation is very different from that of Italy, as Ireland still has a relatively young population. Nevertheless, the underlying demographic reality has undergone a significant shift. Irish demography might fairly have been described as unique by European standards until the fairly recent past. Arguably, the country could be said not to have completed the classic European demographic transition until after the 1960s. In recent decades, however, and notably since the 1980s, there has been a rapid fall in Irish fertility rates (chart 6). While these have not converged totally with the EU average (chart 7) and there is even some evidence of a modest upturn in recent years, the total fertility rate (TFR) seems to be stabilising at a rate slightly below the population replacement level .

Even if one allows for fluctuations, it is hardly likely that the high fertility rates which were the traditional norm will recur. In practical terms, the very rapid growth in the school- and college-level population in the 1980s, itself a result of the changes in the 1960s already referred to, has been succeeded by a much more modest pattern of growth. The population of school-leaving age will in fact peak in the next ten years.

This leaves immigration. Immigration flows into Ireland could historically be classified in fairly predictable ways:

It should be noted that apart from (b) and (c) – where the presence of a modest number of countercultural immigrants was disproportionately influential on a local level because of their preference for settlement in rural areas – few immigrants came to Ireland before the mid-1990s who were not either of Irish background or British. Non-EU immigration, the multinational sector aside, was insignificant (chart 8).

1.2 NEW IMMIGRATION FLOWS

It is in the light of the above that the very dramatic changes in the past five years must be appreciated. A few comments about statistical data might be in order first. The only sources of data easily available are from the Central Statistics Office. While the Census does give a reasonably accurate picture, the last one was in 1996, when the country was only on the threshold of change. Intercensal data are derived through extrapolations from the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) and a number of other sources, but this is not an exact science and the QNHS sample size is not sufficient to enable more than very broad generalisations to be made (see further reservations below). Immigration-related data from immigration and police authorities, social welfare or other sources are not easily available and Irish monitoring of immigrant residents is relaxed. Aggregate figures in intercensal periods for ‘Irish’ ‘UK’, ‘Rest of EU’ ‘USA’ and ‘Rest of World’ categories must also be treated with some caution, as the ‘foreign-born’ will inevitably include a percentage who are in fact the foreign-born children of returning Irish migrants. While it is impossible to estimate these figures (the 2001 Census will enable a clearer picture to be established) it seems safe to predict that Irish-born return migrants and their children constitute a falling proportion of in-migrants as a whole. This is because the volume of Irish out-migrants itself fell in the early 1990s, leaving a decreasing number of recent Irish emigrants in the crucial 25-34 age cohort where the propensity to return (usually for family reasons, to bring up one’s children in Ireland) may be supposed to be strongest.

What is not in dispute (chart 9) is the scale of the overall inward migratory flows. In the period 1995-2000, approximately a quarter of a million persons migrated to Ireland, of whom about half were returning Irish (but see the comments above, which would suggest the real figure for Irish, if we include children born to Irish parent(s), must be higher). The aggregate figure for immigrants (including Irish returnees) in this five-year period is an astonishing 7% approximately of the 1996 population (3.6 million). There are no parallels to these figures in other EU countries. This figure of 7% for in-migration in 1995-2000 would be the equivalent of close to 4 million persons in France. Moreover, this situation of substantial net immigration is set to continue for several years to come, although the actual figures will clearly be influenced by international and internal economic developments.

It will be evident that the great majority of immigrants are return Irish migrants or come from other EU member States or the USA. The CSO’s Population and Migration Estimates up to April 2000, published in September 2000, indicate that only 12% or 29,400 over the five years, came from outside the EU and the USA [6].

Although this figure may appear small it is not negligible; moreover there has been a sharp upward trend since 1999. It is also possible that a degree of intercensal undercounting is taking place and that the sampling methods underlying the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) do not enable an accurate figure for total immigration to be extrapolated. The CSO’s own document alludes to this difficulty in pointing out that they are based on the

At the very least this would suggest that more focused statistical methods are needed. In the meantime, we must await the results of the forthcoming Census (scheduled for the end of April, although foot and mouth disease will almost certainly cause some delay) for an accurate picture of the true current population and the real number of immigrants.

Subject to the caveat entered above, Chart 10 shows the year by year change in in-migration between 1995 and 2000 and Chart 11 shows the regions of origin.

New Immigration Flows

In a general sense, and in distinction to Italy in particular, Ireland has not yet become a major pole of attraction for non-EU migrants. However, there is a rising trend of non-EU migration, both short- and long-term.

Before considering the policy responses to the changes in immigration, one may distinguish the following main types of immigration flows:

The first two categories do not require, in the strict sense, an immigration policy at all, as the persons concerned have a more or less absolute legal right to live and work in Ireland, a right guaranteed by the Irish Constitution in the case of Irish citizens born outside Ireland, by the 1951 Common Travel Area Agreement (and later the Tready of Rome and other legal instruments) in the case of British citizens, and by the Treaties of Rome and Maastricht and other legal arrangements in the case of the citizens of other EU and/or EEA member States.

It should be noted in all cases, however, that immigration should not be confused with integration, whether the latter is interpreted within an assimilationist or multicultural context. The absence of a proper framework for the reception and integration of all non-Irish workers in the Irish labour economy may be a topic which is somewhat beyond the scope of this brief paper, but the least that can be said is that it can lead to considerable difficulties for individual migrants and, unless tackled, can only perpetuate a variety of hidden, implicit and explicit forms of exclusion of and/or discrimination against such individuals. The tough new legislation against discrimination which is now in place and which (correctly) does not distinguish between EU and non-EU migrants, may provide a way forward, but it remains to be seen what caselaw, policy and practice will emerge.

The third category, asylum seekers, is also only partly a labour-related issue. This is because asylum seekers apply to stay under the terms of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. Pending a decision in his/her case, an asylum-seeker does not have the right to work in Ireland. There was a ‘one-off’ decision to allow such a right, on 26 July 1999, to asylum seekers who could demonstrate that that had been in the country for at least a year before that date, but this decision was not rolled over the following year and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has stated that it will not be repeated. Moreover, the vast majority of asylum cases are rejected.

Nonetheless, the topic of asylum-seekers (chart 12) should not be omitted for a variety of reasons. First, although asylum-seekers probably constitute no more than 10% of all foreign immigrants to Ireland since 1995, they have been the subject of considerable media coverage, some of it negative. Secondly, asylum-seekers who have acquired refugee status or humanitarian leave to remain then become eligible to enter the regular labour market, raising all the usual issues about training, education, discrimination and so on. Thirdly, the absence of an American-style quota-based immigration policy, or indeed of any kind of transparent immigration policy, has meant that, in practice, some proportion of asylum seekers arriving in Ireland would more correctly be described as economic migrants, not in itself a term of opprobrium although it is sometimes used as such. Fourthly, there is strong anecdotal evidence that many asylum seekers are working in the black market anyway – Ireland has considerable labor shortages both in high- and low-skills positions. Finally, asylum-seekers are strongly concentrated in urban areas, in spite of Government action since April 2000 to disperse more recent arrivals outside of Dublin. Ethnically-based organisations of asylum seekers constitute a new challenge for Ireland: how to deal with the organised ethnicity of the ‘other’ within Irish social space. Although asylum seekers are small in number they do represent the cutting edge of social innovation in the construction of new identities which contest the traditional, implicitly assimilationist, model.

Programme Refugees constitute a special case unconnected with the needs of the labour market. As in the case of other EU member states, they come to Ireland as a result of a Government decision, usually in consultation with EU partners, to waive the usual requirement for the individual to bring a case at law to become a ‘Convention Refugee’ under the terms of the 1951 Convention, in favour of an organised quota-based system providing for a specific number of refugees from a particular conflict situation to be admitted without the burden of individual proof having to be established before the courts. Thus, Bosnian and Kosovar programme refugees, once admitted, are effectively given the same access and rights to training, education and employment as EU citizens and full-status refugees, although initially they were only allowed to stay for a limited duration. This does not mean that there are not problems – the tendency of of the State in Ireland to rely on self-help and voluntary organisations rather than statutory provision is an issue, while the earlier experience of the Vietnamese was disastrous, as a policy of ‘dispersal’ was implemented without support structures and merely led to a drift back to Dublin.

The two remaining categories to be considered (and the only ones where it has been necessary to give consideration to a strictly labour-market oriented immigration policy) are thus high-skills in-migration from non-EU countries and other in-migration from non-EU countries. This paper will consider the various measures put in place by the Government to encourage specific categories of high-skills workers from outside the EU, while contrasting these policies with the increasingly widespread implementation of a gastarbeiter-type short-term work permit programme for low-skills workers. In 2000 a total of 18,006 short term work permits were issued (chart 13) to nationals of more than 120 countries, marking a considerable increase over previous years. This figure is set to increase further, to a probable 25,000 – 30,000, for 2001[8]. Catering and service industry positions accounted for the largest numbers (chart 14) while workers from Central or Eastern Europe were most strongly represented (chart 15)

2 The regulatory system

2.1 The institutional framework.

Historically, Ireland has not, as noted, received any significant immigration flows. As a relatively poor peripheral European country with strong and sustained emigration, limited employment opportunities and no traditional colonial ties to majority world countries (unlike several other EU member states), little consideration was given to a formal immigration policy. As has been documented elsewhere[9] the prevailing official attitude towards foreign immigrants (the legal term ‘alien’ was generally employed) was one of caution, if not outright opposition.

The above notwithstanding, small communities, notably Italian and Chinese, have been established in Ireland for several decades. Ireland’s Jewish community, most of whom arrived toward the end of the 19^th century, have played a role in Irish public life out of all proportion to their numbers[10]. While they are not an immigrant community, mention should also be made of the Traveller community, an indigenous nomadic group whose lifestyle can in a number of respects be compared to that of Roma and Sinti in other parts of Europe.

In examining official and popular discourses, two strands may be discerned - exclusion, whether outright or through a policy of social containment - and forced assimilation. Thus, members of the Traveller community were subjected in the 1960s to an official policy of forced resettlement, on the one hand, while experiencing exclusion and even persecution at the popular level, on the other.

In an overwhelmingly monocultural Roman Catholic country with few minorities and an insignificant number of foreign-born residents not of Irish extraction, the prevailing attitude was probably less one of deliberate outright rejection or exclusion than an informally codified value system whereby those who were different ‘knew their place’. Moreover, there was no part of Ireland (with the partial exception of two areas of Dublin where many of the city’s Jewish community lived) where the presence of minorities or immigrants was publicly and visibly manifest through an identifiable immigrant quarter.

It is in this light, therefore that the recent changes should be interpreted. Although there had been some previous cases, all of them refugees (Hungarians in 1956; Chileans in 1973; Vietnamese in 1979; Iranian Baha’i in the mid 1980s and Bosnians, in the early 1990s) substantial non-Irish immigration is very recent indeed, arising only from the mid-1990s onwards. As pointed out previously, there was also a rise in the number of asylum seekers in the same, later, period.

Ireland thus experienced, within a short space of time, a substantial rise in non-Irish immigration, mostly from other EU countries, and a smaller but significant rise in non-EU immigrants, whether asylum-seekers, illegal immigrants or immigrant workers on short-term work permits. The country has thus been faced with the difficulties of constructing immigration and integration policies against a background of a rapid changing picture, limited experience, a less than positive attitude towards difference and a largely monocultural tradition. Apart from the rather ad-hoc arrangements made until the recent past for asylum-seekers and refugees, and the more formal arrangements now in place for the same community (although these are unsatisfactory in a number of significant respects) it would be fair to say that there was little that could be described as an ‘official planning process’ on immigration.

2.2 Legal/Regulatory Framework

The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform (formerly the Department of Justice) is responsible for immigration law and immigration controls in Ireland. That Department is also primarily responsible for the Irish contribution to developing EU and international policy on immigration and related issues.

Other Departments also have a role to play. The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (the relevant part of which was formerly the Department of Labour) is responsible for the issuing of work permits. The Department of Foreign Affairs is responsible for certain operational aspects of the Ireland’s immigration and visa regulations outside the country, although the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform retains primary responsibility. In one specific field, that of programme refugees (e.g. the Bosnian and Kosovar Albanian communities) the Department of Foreign Affairs has been involved in a key capacity, while it also retains a 'watching brief' on human rights-related aspects of Ireland's immigration policy in general.

Recent changes to legislation, policy and practice have included a greater degree of inter-departmental cooperation in the fields of immigration and integration[11]. Moreover, insofar as a public debate has taken place at all and changes have been put in train, the situation of refugees and asylum seekers, while unrelated in the strict sense to immigration and the labour market, has been the main impetus for change and the most visible example of changing forward thinking at official level, although the new work visa arrangements (more below) also represent an important labour market initiative.

As a general rule it may still be said that the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform retains primary and frequently sole responsibility for all core aspects of Ireland’s immigration policy, including admission, residence and citizenship issues.

3 IMMIGRATION AND THE LABOUR MARKET

3.1 Regulations governing the entry of foreigners into Ireland.

The most significant legislation governing the admission of foreigners into Ireland was the Aliens Act 1935. In this Act the word "alien" meant a person who was not a citizen of Saorstát Eireann (the Irish Free State, forerunner to the present state of Ireland). Rooted as it was in earlier wartime (World War 1) British legislation, the scope of the Act was extremely wide-ranging and conferred sweeping executive powers on the Minister for Justice. The Minister had the right to forbid landing or entry into the State by any alien, to impose various restrictions on such persons as he saw fit, to forbid them leaving, to deport them, to require them to live in particular districts or places, to prohibit them from living in particular districts or places, and to require them to comply with particular provisions such as registration, change of address, travel, employment and other matters. The Minister had power to use the police, military and customs and excise to give effect to these regulations, to determine the nationality to be ascribed to aliens whose nationality was unknown or uncertain and to require hotelkeepers and similar persons to keep records. In all cases the onus of proof in the event of any contestation lay on the alien or alleged alien. The Minister did not have to give reasons for his decisions and there was no appeal.

The Aliens Order 1946 further codified these draconian provisions with a range of additional specific provisions. The powers given to police and other authorities were extended further, including the power given to immigration and police autorities to arrest a person without warrant if he/she was ‘reasonably suspected’ of having acted or being about to act in contravention of the Order.

Since that time various measures have been introduced which defined new rights for certain classes of people wishing to come to Ireland. Thus, shared membership of the British Commonwealth which ended on 1 January 1949 when Ireland declared a Republic and left the Commonwealth, and which allowed for freedom of travel, residence and work for Irish people in Britain (similar rights were accorded to British citizens in Ireland), was replaced within a few years by the Common Travel Area Agreement, which effectively reinstated the same rights even though no formal constitutional relationship existed any longer between the two jurisdictions, and removed passport controls of citizens of the two jurisdictions. At the same time close cooperation between the Irish and UK immigration authorities continued and deepened over the years. This effectively meant that, while Irish and British citizens were free to live, work, and vote (except in Presidential elections in Ireland and in referenda) in one another’s countries, there was also close cooperation and coordination of the immigration and visa policies applied to would-be visitors from third-country states.

Such cooperation continues today. This largely explains why Ireland and Britain have jointly stayed out of the most of the arrangements put in place after Schengen. For Ireland to have gone in while Britain stayed out would have raised extremely complex and probably insuperable issues for the control of the movement of persons between the two jurisdictions. One should also distinguish between the application of common visa regimes for visitors, where a common Anglo-Irish approach has largely given way to EU-wide cooperation, and the application of policies to control permanent immigration into Ireland, where the country has traditionally followed a highly restrictive approach.

The 1956 Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act (modified in 1986) codified rights to Irish citizenship through birth, descent and naturalisation, including the right to citizenship through an Irish grandparent. The Act created a general although discretionary eligibility for citizenship through naturalisation after a period of five years (with the exception of naturalisation through marriage, for which a separate regime applied). With Ireland’s membership of the European Community (later European Union) on 1 January 1973 came the right of freedom of movement of workers and, more recently (the Treaty of Maastricht 1993), the right of freedom of movement of all citizens of the European Union. Moreover, all citizens of EEA (European Economic Area) countries, which apart from EU member states also includes Liechtenstein, Iceland and Norway, have had essentially similar rights since 1992.

In sum, therefore, one may distinguish two important and entirely divergent trends.

On the one hand, a series of specific measures opened up the possibility of immigration to certain categories of foreign-born persons – those deemed to be entitled to Irish citizenship, British citizens, citizens of other EU member States and citizens of EEA states. These persons all have the right to work in Ireland and no work permit is required.

On the other hand, Ireland had no traditional ‘mother-country’ ties to former colonies. No other immigration routes into Ireland exist except for naturalisation, asylum, limited work permit and work visas regimes – see below – and certain exceptional individual decisions made from time to time by the Minister of the day. The latter category included the introduction in the 1980s of a controversial ‘passports for sale’ policy for wealthy investors, since discontinued following various political controversies concerning payments for passports. In general, until the recent past, the economic climate in Ireland was not conducive to immigration.

In the case of naturalisation through marriage, it is instructive to note that the husbands of Irish citizens could only apply after being married for a period of some years (thus initially preventing them from competing for jobs in a market of scarce opportunities) whereas foreign wives were given automatic and immediate citizenship (on the presumption that women would not enter the paid labour force in any event). This distinction was successfully legally challenged in the 1980s and led to the 1986 amendment already referred to, which applied a less liberal rather than a more liberal regime to both sexes. The lesson one may draw is that official attitudes were largely influenced by labour market considerations.

In practice, therefore, the earlier, draconian legislation referred to above has remained in place for most non-EU would-be immigrants. With the exception of the admission of middle and senior management from the multinational sector, it would be fair to say that until the very recent past the mindset, policies and practices of immigration officials in Ireland in respect of putative non-EU immigrants had probably changed little since the 1930s.

Some evidence of these general attitudes may be found in the almost complete absence of integration (as opposed to immigration) policies until the 1990s and in the arbitrary practices of the 1980s when asylum-seekers were sometimes bundled back onto aircraft or even imprisoned, often on such flimsy pretexts as the assertion that they had not used some particular form of words in making their claim. A general suspicion of foreigners, unless they were white and/or wealthy, was characteristic of the attitude of the Department of Justice. This was most clearly in evidence in the operation of visa policies for visitors (i.e. where permanent residence was not even being sought) where arbitrary decisions were frequent, no explanation was given and no appeal was allowed.

Finally, while the legislation was not updated and in certain respects has yet to be, a considerable body of codified policy and practice did inevitably develop. Unfortunately, as this was not embodied in legislation and was thus not generally open to parliamentary or public scrutiny, it perpetuated the general climate of secrecy and non-accountability which had come to be typical of the Department of Justice.

3.2 The presence and role of immigrants in the labour market

Ireland’s position after World War 2 was different from that of any other northern European country, although clearly not different from that which obtained in southern Europe, including Italy and Spain. Large numbers of Irish emigrants, as has already been seen, continued to find work in Britain and other countries. As a largely rural country with little industrialisation and no way of absorbing large numbers of indigenous workers, the question of bilateral country-to-country regimes and of immigrant quotas simply did not arise for Ireland. Insofar as immigrants were admitted to Ireland to undertake specialist work in the public or private sector, the over-riding principle in the issuing of work permits was the need for the potential employer to demonstrate that no Irish citizen (after 1973 this was extended to include other EU and later EEA citizens) was available to do the work in question.

It would thus be fair in a general sense to describe Ireland as a non-immigrant country apart from certain exceptions (such as employees in transnational corporations) where access to the labour market was determined on a case by case basis by negotiation between employer, the Department of Labour and the would-be immigrant. Numbers, as has been shown in section 1, were small before the 1990s.

Within its limits this regime could be both flexible, relatively speedy and efficient and even liberal. Thus, within the university sector, the notion that an Irish or EEA person might not be available to do the work was often interpreted generously – after all every academic position is unique and a statement from a university that a particular individual was needed to take up a particular post was not usually questioned.

There were however a number of obvious drawbacks to this ad hoc, market-driven regime. The most obvious are that a work permit rather than work visa regime effectively ties the immigrant to a particular employer, while the lack of clarity and transparency regarding family reunification rights – an issue which has yet to be fully clarified – sometimes meant that immigrants who were granted work permits had difficulties in having members of their immediate families admitted to join them.

It would be fair to say that all of these issues affected a relatively small number of individuals before the late 1990s.

3.3 New Policies

Irish policy, for reasons already explained, has developed in a rather piecemeal way over several decades. The country does not have a formal quota-based immigration policy with country quotas or (with certain exceptions) special category immigration visas. In effect, the admission of immigrants has been largely market-led, as the onus has been firmly placed on employers to show that a particular individual or group of individuals was required and that no EEA persons were available and willing to do the job.

It is this market-led, administratively light policy which is now proving inadequate to deal with recent changes in labour market supply and demand and which is in the course of revision. As will be seen below, a gradual shift is taking place from a work permit regime to a work visa regime (where the individual is not tied to a particular employer) but the more liberal regime is only being applied to high-skills employment where a labour shortage exists, even though shortages also exist in a range of other sectors.

The shortage of workers with key skills has led to high-profile Government campaigns in 2000 and 2001 to attract suitably qualified foreign workers. A Government-sponsored jobs fair has already visited a number of countries, including Canada, the Czech Republic, India, South Africa and the USA. It will be evident that not all of those targeted are would-be Irish return migrants.

The section which follows describes the principal categories of immigrant workers in terms of the admission regime and related arrangements which apply to them.

Work permits

Definition

Up to the present, Ireland has in general relied on a work permit, not a work visa, scheme. This means that an employer must demonstrate that he/she has a particular need for the worker in question. The logic of the system is that a work permit is therefore granted to a worker to work for that particular employer and only for that particular employer. The worker is not free to sell his or her labour on the open labour market. The employer, not the prospective employee, must apply for the permit.

There are a number of exceptions where a work permit is not required by an non-EEA citizen, notably

The Work Permit Section in the Department of Trade, Enterprise and Employment examines applications from employers and issues permits where appropriate. The fees for a work permit ranges from £25.00 to £125.00 depending on the duration of a permit (maximum twelve months).

Given that it is pertinent for the Irish Government to ensure that employment is available for Irish and other EEA nationals, employers who apply for work permits are generally required to establish that it has not been possible, in spite of reasonable efforts being made, to fill the vacancy with an Irish or other person for whom a work permit is not required. A permit is granted when the employer has no alternative but to employ a non-EEA national.[12]

Social and economic rights of work permit holders.

Work Permit holders have the right to enter employment and reside in the State. Nonetheless, they do not have the right to free medical care and social welfare entitlements. Furthermore, they do not have the right to free education.

Work visas and work authorisation

Definition

To facilitate the recruitment of suitably qualified people from non-EEA countries for designated sectors of the employment market where skill shortages are particularly acute, a working visa and work authorisation[13] scheme was introduced in 2000. This makes it possible for prospective employees with job offers from employers in Ireland to obtain immigration and employment clearance in advance from Irish Embassies and Consulates. (Immigration Officers retain discretion in specified circumstances to refuse entry to any non-national.)

Applications for working visas and work authorisations are accepted from persons outside the country only. All of the sectors covered are experiencing substantial labour shortages at present.

These visas and authorisations are usually granted for a period of two years by the Irish Embassy or Consulate and can be renewed at the end of that period. While the application must be accompanied by a job offer from an employer in Ireland, holders of working visas and of work authorisations are allowed to change their employers within the same skills category after arrival in Ireland as long as they continue to have authorisation to work and reside in the country.

Social and economic rights

Work visas or work authorisation allows the person to enter employment and reside in the State. They also have the right to travel if a re-entry visa is obtained before a person leaves Ireland. However, they do not have the right to free medical care and social welfare entitlements. Furthermore, they do not have the right to free education.

In general, the holder of a work authorisation may be joined by his/her spouse and/or minor dependant children once he/she can show that he/she is in employment. The holder of a working visa must have been in Ireland for three months before he/she can be joined by his/her spouse and/or minor dependant children. The holder of a working visa or work authorisation must be able to support the family members in question without the need for them to have recourse to public funds or paid employment (unless a family member holds a working visa, work authorisation or work permit in his/her own right).

Dependent children under the age of 18 are entitled to free primary and secondary education.

Business permits

Definition

Anyone can apply for a business permit. Individuals and companies that are not from a European Agreement country have to invest a minimum sum of £300,000.00. This condition does not apply to nationals and companies from countries, which have signed Association Agreements with the European Community. They include: the Baltic States, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovak Republics, Slovenia and Romania.

The association agreements came about following the fall of the Berlin Wall when the European Community took steps to strengthen their relationship with the Central and Eastern Europe countries (CEEC). The intention was to create association agreements “of third generation” providing a context for aid and assistance to the CEEC and, in the longer term, integration into the Community[14]. The agreements contain articles relating to the exercise of a right of establishment by companies and nationals from each of the Europe Agreement countries. The agreements give them access to and residence on the territory of the Union for self-employed and those seeking to establish themselves as self-employed through a company or as key personnel of a company or firm based in a Europe Agreement country[15].

Social and economic rights

Individuals with Business Permits have the right to reside in the State. They only have the right to establish and carry out a business. They do not have the right to medical and social welfare entitlements. Furthermore, they do not have the right to free education.

4 Immigrant Labour Policies

4.1 Rights and Protections for foreign workers

Legislation to deal with discrimination in the workplace is still in its infancy in Ireland, but significant changes have taken place in recent years. Three principal pieces of legislation are now in place. Moreover, the Government has also established powerful new agencies to police the implementation of these measures. While these changes are broad-ranging in their implications, there is a primary focus on the workplace.

Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989

This legislation was the first of its kind in Ireland. It is directed at (a) actions likely to stir up hatred (b) broadcasts likely to stir up hatred (c) preparation and possession of material likely to stir up hatred. Unfortunately, while well-intentioned, the Act has proved difficult to apply in practice, largely because the burden of proof in showing an actual intention to incite hatred is difficult to establish. In more than a decade since 1989 only a single case was upheld and it has just been overturned (March 2001) on appeal[16].

The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has already announced (late 2000) a review of the legislation.

Equal Employment Act 1998

The Employment Equality Act, 1998 prohibits discrimination in relation to employment on nine distinct grounds

With the exception of gender and marital status, complaints of discrimination under any of the other grounds can only be brought in relation to incidents which occurred after 18 October 1999. It will be noted that ‘immigrant’ is not in itself included in the nine grounds and that the term race (used without inverted commas) is in itself much contested, at least in the English-speaking world. The precise scope of the legislation will in practice be determined by emerging caselaw. The Act is likely to be a powerful instrument for change.

Where a person considers that s/he has been discriminated against on the gender ground, the Act allows the complainant the option of applying directly to the Circuit Court for redress.

The Employment Equality Act covers employees in both the public and private sectors as well as applicants for employment and training. The scope of the Act is comprehensive and deals with discrimination in work related areas, from vocational training to access to employment and employment conditions generally, including training, work experience and advancement within employment. The publication of discriminatory advertisements and discrimination by employment agencies, vocational training bodies and certain vocational bodies i.e. trades unions and employer, professional and trade associations are also outlawed.

Equal Status Act 2000

The Equal Status Act, 2000, prohibits discrimination in the provision of goods, services, disposal of property and access to education, on any of the nine grounds referred to under the Employment Equality Act 1998.

The Act outlaws discrimination in all services that are generally available to the public, whether provided by the State or the private sector. These include facilities for refreshment, entertainment, banking, insurance, grants, credit facilities, transport and travel services. Discrimination in disposing of premises, provision of accommodation, admission or access to educational courses or establishments is prohibited subject to a number of exemptions. The Act also contains sanctions against private registered clubs that are found to be discriminating.

Establishment of State agencies to implement new legislation.

Two new agencies, the Office of the Director of Equality Investigations (www.odei.ie) and the Equality Authority (www.equality.ie) have been established. While it is still too early to evaluate the effectiveness of these agencies, what can be said is that their pro-active approach and legislative powers do give them real power and should enable a new landscape of equal rights to be mapped out. It is also likely to lead to a more anticipatory and pro-active approach such as auditing and developing of 'racism-proofing' approaches to institutional and corporate policies and practices in the same way that gender- and poverty-proofing are already becoming standard practice.

The National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism.

The NCCRI was established in 1998 with the aim of promoting a more pluralist and intercultural Ireland. It has no statutory powers and reports to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. Its principal role is likely to be the implementation of a Government-sponsored anti-racism campaign with a three-year budget of approximately IR£4.5m. It has also been promoted a number of specific campaigns, mainly in the area of public awareness raising, such as the 1998 A Part of Ireland Now campaign on refugees and immigrants in Ireland.

5 CONCLUDING REMARKS

5.1 Immigration and Integration Policy

Policy to date has been piecemeal and has left it largely to the market to determine de facto immigration criteria in individual cases. Changes introduced in 2000 saw a shift from work permits to work visas, but only in the case of a limited number of specific sectors where skill shortages were known to exist. In the meantime, there has been a significant rise in short-term work permits of one year or less, mainly for less skilled labour. The nature of the work permit system, which effectively ties the immigrant to a particular employer, leaves open considerable possibilities for abuse and regrettably there are indications that such abuse is indeed taking place[17]. One has to wonder how the distinction between work visas for the well-educated, high-skilled migrant, and work permits for the less fortunate, can be justified.

Coordination at governmental level is poor as yet. The Interdepartmental Working Group on the Integration of Refugees in Ireland produced a groundbreaking report Integration: a Two-Way Process in 1999. Taking the theme that “people from different backgrounds and cultures can enrich the society around them and contribute to the continued development of Ireland”, the report was the work of a committee, representing the following Government departments

The report’s recommendations include the need for an organizational structure for co-ordinating and implementing policy, the need to raise public awareness, the need to make mainstream services more accessible, and the need to conduct more basic research. While excellent, the very objectives chosen by the report provide some indication of how much ground has yet to be covered. Moreover, consultation with interested NGOs, community groups and key individuals was limited and included very few representatives of minority and immigrant communities. Follow-up has been extremely limited.

The report, as the title of the working group confirms, was concerned with refugees rather that the immigrant community in general. This in turn highlights another vacuum. While the Department of Justice has perforce been obliged to address the more urgent issues in connection with asylum seekers and refugees, there is a danger that ‘normal’ labour market immigrants and their needs are not being attended to at all. Yet the issues of integration and multiculturalism raised in the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee arise in similar ways for all immigrants.

The danger is that a voluntarist approach to the social integration of immigrants, based on elite discourses and focused on only one segment of the immigrant population (refugees and asylum seekers) will fail to achieve the more fundamental aim of preparing Irish society in general for the advent of a multicultural society and for the mainstreaming of multicultural objectives throughout the range of State policies, programmes and services. All of this serves to highlight the absence of an inter-departmental structure with real power, prepared to tackle all of the issues of immigration, integration and multiculturalism in a concerted, integrated fashion.

5.2 Recommendations/possible areas for future research

[1] Government of Ireland (1958) Programme for Economic Expansion.

[2] O’Connell, P. (1999) 'Astonishing Success: Economic Growth and the Labour Market in Ireland'. ILO Employment and Training Paper No. 44. Geneva: ILO.

[3] Government of Ireland (1999) National Development Plan 2000-2006.

[4] Department of Finance, Monthly Economic Bulletin, March 2001.

[5] e.g. the ‘marriage bar’ whereby women in the civil service were obliged, until 1973, to retire on marriage.

[6] Central Statistics Office (2000) Population and Migration Estimates April 2000. Dublin: CSO, p.8.

[7] Central Statistics Office (2000) op.cit.

[8] See ‘On target for 200,000 immigrants to take jobs’, Irish Examiner, 28 March 2001

[9] See, for example, Fanning, B. (2001) ‘Reluctant Hosts: Refugee Policy in Twentieth-century Ireland’ Administration, vol. 48, no. 4 (Winter 2000-01); Keogh, D. (2000), Jews in Ireland, (Cork: Cork University Press) and the Reports of the Commission on Emigration and Other Population Problems 1948-1954

[10] See Keogh, D. (1999) op.cit

[11] See, for example the Interdepartmental Working Group on the Integration of Refugees in Ireland (1999) Integration: a Two-way Process. Dublin: Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

[12] For more detailed information, please see Changes to Work Permit Requirements in Ireland: Information Note, available from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

[13] Work authorisation is granted to persons from any country, which does not need an entry visa to enter Ireland. Work visas are granted to persons that do require a visa to enter Ireland.

[14] Guild, Elspeth. (1996) A Guide to the Right of Establishment under the Europe Agreements, Baileys Shaw & Gillett in association with ILPA, p. 2.

[16] See ‘New incitement of hatred act sought’, Irish Times, 14 March 2001

[17] See, for example, ‘Visas for immigrant workers sought by SIPTU’ Irish Times 22 March 2001; ‘Immigrants treated little better than bonded labour, claims union’ Irish Examiner 22 March 2001.

Immigration into Ireland: Trends, Policy Responses, Outlook

Piaras Mac Éinrí

List of Charts

The 1990s – a period of dramatic change.

Economic growth and the labour force.

New Immigration Flows

In sum, therefore, one may distinguish two important and entirely divergent trends.

Work permits

Definition

Social and economic rights of work permit holders.

Work visas and work authorisation

Definition

Social and economic rights

Business permits

Definition

Social and economic rights

Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989

Equal Employment Act 1998

Equal Status Act 2000

Establishment of State agencies to implement new legislation.

The National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism.