Every week, Kunle, who is from Nigeria, drives around Co Clare visiting the homes of people who are physically disabled or who are old and infirm.
He helps them get out of bed, washes them, dresses them, prepares their breakfast, shops for them and, just as importantly, talks with them. “I feel happy if they are happy,” he says. He works long hours, but he’s proud of his work.
He likes his employers. He likes the people he assists. He’s good at his job.
But he has few friends here – it’s hard to make friends in Ireland, he says – and his wife and two young children are back home.
He earns below the €30,000 threshold that would allow a spouse to come to Ireland under the current general permit system. He sends much of the money he makes home. He spends his time off video-calling his family, though it’s hard to keep young children interested in a video call, he says. He watches films alone. “I text my wife: ‘I wish you were here watching this with me’.” He has been doing this for over four years.
Many of the people caring for Ireland’s most vulnerable are here on their own, separated from family. In 2022 and 2023, more than 70,000 employment permits were issued to people from countries outside the EU.
There are two categories of work permit. One is a critical skills permit that pertains to specialised positions such as doctors, nurses, ICT workers and engineers.
Around half of the 70,000 are on general employment permits. The categories of employment deemed eligible include chefs, large goods vehicle drivers, meat processing workers, fishery and agriculture workers, healthcare assistants, care workers and home care workers like Kunle.
People who have come here with a “critical skills” permit are allowed to bring their families with them immediately. The requirements for people who are on a general employment permit, are more onerous. Sectors lobby to have needed jobs added to the list of positions eligible under the scheme, but often the people they recruit do not earn the €30,000 a year required to bring a spouse into the country. That figure rises up to €40,000 if they wish to bring in even one child.
Even if they meet that figure, these workers must wait a year before they can apply to have a family member join them. The application process can take another year. Many people end up waiting for up to seven years.
Nurudeen Oyewole from Nigeria works as a social care worker in Dublin, but because he is on a general employment permit and earns below the threshold for reunification, his wife and children cannot join him in Ireland.
Every week, Kunle, who is from Nigeria, drives around Co Clare visiting the homes of people who are physically disabled or who are old and infirm. He helps them get out of bed, washes them, dresses them, prepares their breakfast, shops for them and, just as importantly, talks with them. “I feel happy if they are happy,” he says. He works long hours, but he’s proud of his work.
He likes his employers. He likes the people he assists. He’s good at his job.
But he has few friends here – it’s hard to make friends in Ireland, he says – and his wife and two young children are back home.
He earns below the €30,000 threshold that would allow a spouse to come to Ireland under the current general permit system. He sends much of the money he makes home.
He spends his time off video-calling his family, though it’s hard to keep young children interested in a video call, he says.
He watches films alone. “I text my wife: ‘I wish you were here watching this with me’.” He has been doing this for over four years.
Many of the people caring for Ireland’s most vulnerable are here on their own, separated from family. In 2022 and 2023, more than 70,000 employment permits were issued to people from countries outside the EU.
There are two categories of work permit. One is a critical skills permit that pertains to specialised positions such as doctors, nurses, ICT workers and engineers. Around half of the 70,000 are on general employment permits.
The categories of employment deemed eligible include chefs, large goods vehicle drivers, meat processing workers, fishery and agriculture workers, healthcare assistants, care workers and home care workers like Kunle.
‘I am divorced at 60, envious of my ex-husband’s new life and struggling with loneliness’
People who have come here with a “critical skills” permit are allowed to bring their families with them immediately.
The requirements for people who are on a general employment permit, are more onerous. Sectors lobby to have needed jobs added to the list of positions eligible under the scheme, but often the people they recruit do not earn the €30,000 a year required to bring a spouse into the country. That figure rises up to €40,000 if they wish to bring in even one child.
Even if they meet that figure, these workers must wait a year before they can apply to have a family member join them.
The application process can take another year. Many people end up waiting for up to seven years.
“A lot of people are being recruited and being told they can have their families with them and when they get here there’s a very different reality for them,” says Edel McGinley, director of the Migrant Rights Centre (MRCI).
“We estimate that about half of all GEP [general employment permit] holders are seeking to reunite with a spouse and/or children.”
Kunle underestimated the complexity of the system. In 2022 and 2023, he took as much overtime and extra work as he could to push his income to €40,000, well above the income required for reunification.
He then discovered that his application had to be based on the salary level in his basic contract. Overtime could not be considered. Subsequently, his employers agreed to hire his wife if she got the correct qualification.
Although she managed to get a work permit, her residency was denied. He has been renting a two-bed apartment in the hope of having his family with him, but is losing hope.
His children are five and seven. “Each time I speak to them, they always say ‘Dad, when do I come to your house?’ … They don’t know what the distance looks like … They want to play with you, they want to touch you … It’s really difficult for me.”
He likes the job and he likes Ireland. He would like a future for his family here.
“The elderly people in this country, they need us,” he says. “In this job you need to be someone who is creditable and someone that your service user can trust … I’ve already built a bond with my service users. I’m happy with my job.”
Elish Kelly, a senior researcher with the ESRI, shows me a chart that maps the movement of people coming in and out of Ireland in recent decades. Anyone coming here under the permit system, she says, is coming in response to skills shortages that have developed since our economy started growing again in 2014.
The number of people who are willing to come from the European accession states – a major source of immigration during the Celtic Tiger years – has dropped hugely, mainly due to economic growth in their own countries. Many of the people who came in those years returned. So Ireland needs people from outside the EEA.
She also notes that though skills shortages wax and wane, in the long term, as the population ages, we will need more workers from abroad.
“We’re not the only country in that situation. We’re competing with other countries for excess labour that might exist in the rest of the world.”
In order to use the work permit system, employers have to show that they have advertised within Ireland and Europe for those roles to no success. There’s also a 50 per cent limit on the proportion of employees that can be hired from outside the EEA by any one company.
Tadhg Daly, chief executive of Nursing Homes Ireland, which represents the private nursing home sector, says people shouldn’t underestimate how hard it is to recruit in a country that is reaching full employment.
“The people who are working in our care services, working in nursing homes, are skilled, trained, qualified professionals, who have a very difficult job.”
–Irish Times