While Simon Harris and others including his Cabinet colleague the Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, and the main opposition party Sinn Féin, have recently pitched a harder line on asylum migration, none have addressed the elephant in the room.
That being the fact that the vast bulk of immigration is driven by people coming to work, either from outside or inside the EU, and of students a large proportion of whom also appear to work and many of whom stay.
While this will continue to be the case as long as it suits, there has been a notable change this year – namely that there has been a significant slowing in the number of persons coming here to work. This is not connected to any government policy – as there is none really – but is almost entirely dependent on global economic trends. Those trends have led to a marginal slowing of economic growth which has been reflected in a fall in labour demand.
This can be seen in the statistics on the issuing of new PPS numbers, as we have looked at recently, and 2025 has also seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of work permits that have been withdrawn from companies and individuals who had been issued with them in preceding years.
To the end of September, 13,784 permits were withdrawn which represents a huge jump on other years. There were just 1,064 withdrawals in 2024, 641 in 2023 and 1,705 in 2023.
The year’s total for new permits would also appear to be on target to fall. 22,542 new issues were granted up to the end of September, which if the monthly average holds for the remaining quarter of the year will reach around 30,000, a fall of 25% compared to the 39,390 issued in 2024.
Some nationalities have been impacted more than others which is connected to the prevalence of citizens of those countries in the sectors that appear to have been most impacted by the fall in permits issued and renewed.
‘No country’ is entered for 2,480 of those whose permits were withdrawn, which is a category that is not listed for any of the previous years. Queries sent to the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment (DETE) on the overall 2025 figures remain unanswered.
Of those which are listed, 3,031 permits were withdrawn from people with Indian citizenship. They were followed by Brazil with 1,510; Philippines 1,054; Pakistan 613; Zimbabwe 614; South Africa 593, and China with 450 withdrawals. More permits were withdrawn from Zimbabweans than new permits were issued.
What accounts for that, and which sectors have been most impacted, is interesting. Especially when 2024 had seen an increase of one third on the number of permits issued in 2023.
The increase last year would appear to have been largely accounted for by the expansion of the scheme, on January 1, 2024, to a whole new range of occupations. However, it was also claimed by Futures Direct, which is owned by Dale Chen and has been a leading facilitator of permit driven immigration from outside of the EU, that there was a downside to the new regulations. That was connected to the increase in minimum salary thresholds.
Future Direct, interestingly, now offers its clients and potential clients among employers various options – “From exploring alternative visa options like Stamp 1 permissions to strategizing permit renewals” – as a means to deal with the new situation.
Apart from including new employment sectors, the new permits regulations centre on increasing the minimum salary threshold from €30,000 to €34,000. The thresholds were or are being increased in stages so their impact is only beginning to be seen this year.
For example, meat processors had until July last year to introduce the new threshold and they have seen a marked increase in withdrawals, accounting for 22% according to the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment (DETE.)
Not all sectors were subject to the same increases. The rate for healthcare assistants and home carers, which fall into the ‘Health and Social Work’ category, was to increase only to €30,000 in January 2024 but that was maintained at €27,000 for 2024. Even so, 12% of the withdrawals have been in the area of healthcare assistants and care workers.
Hospitality and food have made up the largest proportion of withdrawals at 28%. The increase of the threshold to €34,000 was deferred pending a review which closed at the end of January this year and no decision has yet been made to officially increase the rate from €30,000.
Even the IT sector has taken a hit with 18% of the withdrawals. It is likely that external factors which have led to layoffs by some of the international tech giants is more the issue here rather than any changes to wage rates which remain above average even for lower grade employees.
Annual reports from the Department responsible (we shall have to wait until 2026 to see its take on the impact of the changes this year) list the most common reasons for permits being withdrawn from companies which have been issued with them.
As we have seen in our reports on the sort of cases which reach the Work Relations Commission (WRC) a significant number related to breaches of the permit regulations. DETE reports refer to employers who have changed the job description, who have been closed for breaches of health regulations in the food sector, paying salaries below the threshold for the job spec, and not having complied with the labour market test which is designed to show that the job can not be filled by someone already here.
What the WRC cases also show is that there appears to be a sizable informal economy in which persons from third countries are employed by people from the same country. Thus, while the large number of withdrawals of permits issued to people from India and the Philippines are likely to correlate to changes in the IT and health sectors, others may relate to factors specific to particular migrant groups.
The more informal the arrangements are, the more vulnerable the people working in them are to various types of abuse. The monitoring of those through the WRC and other means may explain one of the main reasons for the massive jump in withdrawals of permits.
That aside, tens of thousands of people will continue to come here to work, either from outside the EU or from other member states where a permit is not required. When Harris and others refer to immigration being “too high” there is no indication that they are primarily referring to that aspect which is overwhelmingly responsible for the ongoing increase in numbers arriving.
A cynic might even argue that the State is at last beginning to get tough on bogus immigration through asylum seeking as a means to avoid a debate over the consequences of labour demand driven migration which has and will continue to have an unprecedented impact on the demographics and nature of the island.