Why is there a Labour Shortage?

I'm surprised that people can't think of any scenarios or conditions where someone with a legitimate asylum claim may not be able to produce documents. War, famine, political persecution, trafficking, etc. are not optimal conditions for planning and executing travel. There were punters on my flight from the UK today who seemed to have lost half of their belongings going from check-in to the gate.
 
80% to 90% of the bogus AS arriving in Ireland are arriving from the UK, not from war or famine.

They are not persecuted, they are economic migrants, who often have willingly decided to pay criminals to help get them here.

They are not innocent victims.

They have chosen to engage criminals, and pay those criminals, to help them get here.
 
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Towger said:
They used to hand out PPSNs like smarties, that created 'other issues'.
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Okay, so forget the PPS number, and put another arrangement in place, to permit people to work on a PAYE bases. Let's not get distracted from the need to get more people into the workforce, and particularly, into the lower wage roles...
 
You can't get on an aeroplane without a passport or national identity card.
 
Anyway, immigrants, legal or illegal, are not the reason we have a labour shortage.
Our welfare system encourages under employment.
Our high marginal income tax rates at moderate incomes encourages under employment.
Those tax rates coupled with high childcare costs encourages under employment, especially amongst women and they are generally the most educated.
 
Towger said:
They used to hand out PPSNs like smarties, that created 'other issues'.
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In Canada they have temporary ppsn numbers for temporary workers and working holiday visa holders, this system should be introduced here , on their system immediately from the social insurance number they can see if it is a temporary one and then check the expiry date easily. Therefore if asylum applications are granted these numbers they will expire Therefore stopping failed applications disappearing into the black economy because only genuine and successful applicants will ultimately be granted a permanent one.
 
MrEarl said:
No, but they can help solve it....

I agree with the other points made, btw
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Immigrants are an absolutely critical part of our economy. They feed the multinational sector with the labour we locals can’t supply and the MNC sector contributes 60% of our total tax take.
 
PMU said:
But you could also solve/mitigate it by subsidised childcare targeted at sectors of the economy where there are labour shortages.
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You could also do it by just reducing the higher marginal tax rate (PRSI, PAYE USC) which is over 50% on medium to high incomes.
 
Ireland has the highest proportion of people on some sort of welfare payment in Europe. That acts as a disincentive to work also in Ireland you pay the higher rate of tax much earlier than in other countries, another disincentive to work and doing overtime or doing difficult high paying jobs. People make the choice it is better to stay I an easier lower paid job
 
Doesn’t children’s allowance and the State pension count as welfare payments?

That would account for a very large proportion of those receiving welfare payments. I would guess that job seekers represent a pretty modest proportion of the total.
 
I know that in Germany, for example, employees get higher tax allowances (rather than welfare payments) for each child.

Comparing different tax/welfare systems is always fraught.
 
Child Benefit in DE, or Kindergeld, is 250 per month, universal payment to every child.




Child benefits, Child benefits supplement, and child allowance​

As of January 2023, child benefits (Kindergeld) are being increased to 250 euros per child per month and are applied uniformly for each child. The increase initially only applies to 2023 and 2024, as a new form of basic child benefits (Kindergrundsicherung) are to be introduced in 2025.

The maximum child supplement (Kinderzuschlag) is also being increased to 250 euros per month per child. The child supplement is paid on application to families who are entitled to child benefits and have low incomes. The immediate supplement (Sofortzuschlag), which has been paid to children affected by poverty since July 2022, is already included in the new maximum amount.

The 2022 child allowance (Kinderfreibetrag) will be increased retroactively to January 1st, 2022 by 160 euros for a total of 8,548 euros (previously 8,388 euros). This will affect 2022 tax returns. From 2023 onwards, a new child allowance totaling 8,952 euros per child will apply. This includes the base child allowance as well as the allowance for childcare and education (Freibetrag für den Betreuungs-, Erziehungs- und Ausbildungsbedarf).
 
There's no Irish political party in Government or otherwise, with the guts to tackle those claiming long term benefits without true justification.

What's worse, the rest of us tolerate that position, and instead, subsidise those who don't want to work.
 
The visa system needs an overhaul.

We do not draw the eastern Europeans in like we once did given their own economies have improved, so we have to look further afield. That means a revised visa system. There is a large pool of people in Asia & Africa who could be put through some filtering processes (e.g, english language and skill tests) to come to Ireland and be deployed in key areas e.g, tradesmen and assistants.

We sent a team to South Africa a few years ago with this idea for construction, but there was and is limited resourcing, conviction and no high level sponsorship of this logic - an enhanced visa an immigration policy would also give us grounds to get tougher on illegals or to expedite asylum for those who can add value to Ireland (and move faster to return those with no business here).
 
The visa system is not the problem. It is providing accommodation for these people. Savilles had an interesting report published and yes they are estate agents however there are no homes available for 3 out of every 4 people. Other countries who import labour from Asia in particular India have workers camps. Their families do not live with them. We have people arriving perhaps a recruitment drive for those eligible to work might be a better solution?
 

There are 35,000 construction workers on the Live Register.

Why not encourage them to work first, before we look for non-EU workers?
 
The number was 120,000 on live register, so a big drop to 35,000, and a lot of them are on in-work benefits according to IBEC. The remaining number would help but won't solve a large chunk of the problem, and given the number was 120K, the laws of percentage mean there is a few thousand basically unemployable for whatever reasons.

We will need foreign construction workers and I suspect the employers would rather target those with some element of experience or a skill rather than trying to shoe horn those currently arriving into a job they need to learn from scratch and are potentially not motivated for but feel obliged into.

Maybe a recruitment drive for those arriving makes sense too - yet that may encourage more to try and arrive regardless of their skills when we can likely afford to pick from talent pools instead of random pools. I'd rather those who arrive are pushed to justify that their experience is relevant to Ireland not just construction, and they are then used in the respective areas. There was a number of stories of highly skilled Ukrainians willing but unable to work as their certs weren't recognised here.
 
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