Some 1,000 workers (69% up on 2010) were recruited from abroad last year to fill IT jobs in Ireland
Salaries of up to €70,000 were offered — because employers could not find enough suitable candidates here.
The number of workers hired from outside the EU has almost doubled in a year, the Irish Independent has learned.
The figures mean more than a quarter of all new IT jobs are now estimated to go to people recruited from outside the country.
An analysis of Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation figures shows that the number of new employment permits issued to staff to work in the IT industry soared to 932 last year, compared with just 551 in 2010.
And the figures do not take account of staff hired in the European Economic Area, which includes the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, as they are entitled to move freely and do not need permits.
There were more new permits issued to staff to work in IT than in any other sector.
Another 697 new permits were issued for healthcare workers, 374 for workers in the services industry, 219 in catering, 192 in manufacturing and 185 in financial services.
The number of non EU-workers alone who were taken on is likely to represent at least one out of every four job opportunities which arose in the IT sector last year, during which 4,000 new jobs where announced.
The worsening state of the skills shortage has come to light as more than 434,000 people are on the dole, and the Government tries to entice workers to take up technology careers through ‘conversion courses’.
Among those hiring overseas were Wipro Technologies, Facebook and Google, while already this year hi-tech giants including Ericsson, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and Paypal have applied for permits for overseas workers.
The permits are only issued to staff after employers have ”made every effort” to recruit an Irish worker or native of the European Economic Area for the post.
Kerry-based software firm Annadale is one of many having difficulties finding suitable candidates to fill vacancies.
It has been forced to train up maths and civil engineering graduates in computer programming to compete with multinationals handpicking the top students.
Business development manager Liz McCarthy said the company had been advertising for three Java developers for two years.
“Innate talent is hard to come by, as well as those who have experience in the industry,” she said.
“We have converted some graduates ourselves, but don’t have the resources to continue doing that.”
She added that although a number of government initiatives were aimed at encouraging workers to enter technology careers, her experience was that the calibre of many IT graduates was not as high as her firm demands.
‘Unsustainable’, State agency Forfas warned that continued levels of inward migration were ”unsustainable”and would come at a cost to the economy.
It estimated that as many as 55pc of highly skilled graduate positions in the technology sector were filled through inward migration in 2010.
Among the jobs in high demand are software engineers, network specialists, security experts, mobile phone programmers, and staff with fluency in French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Swedish.
The State’s efforts to improve the situation have already led to a record number of Leaving Certificate students opting for higher level maths this year following the introduction of bonus points in the subject.
A Donegal graduate is elected the new USI president of Ireland in Galway today
Donegal native John Logue (above left) has been elected as the new president of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI).
The 23-year-old UCD law graduate will take up office on July 1.
He was elected today by delegates gathered for USI’s annual congress in Galway and will succeed Gary Redmond, who has spent two years at the helm of USI.
Mr Logue said he was “honoured and humbled” to have been chosen by the students of Ireland to lead them in what is a hugely challenging time for education.
He said that Ireland has prided itself on an education sector that produces the best and brightest the world has to offer.
“However, with increasing pressure on funding we are starving ourselves of the chance to live up to this aspiration.
“Now, more than ever, the Government need to realise that education is not a luxury, it is an economic imperative”, Mr Logue concluded.
Shareholders of IL&P challenge the State’s takeover of the group’s assurance arm Irish Life
Shareholders in Irish Life & Permanent have taken a legal challenge in a bid to block the Finance Minister Michael Noonan from taking over its Irish Life division for €1.3bn.
Last month the High Court made directions allowing for the takeover of the businesses following a failure to find a buyer for it on the private market.
The proposed sale to the State is part of the re-capitalisation of IL&P as part of the EU/IMF/ECB troika agreement.
However, earlier this week a number of shareholders took a challenge to the have the court’s direction orders set aside.
Today in the High Court Justice Patrick McCarthy granted IL&P permission to bring a motion seeking to have the company included as a notice party to the shareholder’s challenge.
The HSE figures reveal that 178,000 patients are on outpatient waiting lists
The latest HSE figures show more than 10000 people referred before January 2011 remain on waiting lists.
Nearly 178,000 people are on outpatient waiting lists to be seen by a consultant after referral by a GP, new figures published by the HSE show.
Over 10,000 people referred before January 2011 remain on waiting lists and some 316 people referred before that date have been waiting over four years for an appointment.
It is the first time the HSE has published the figures compiled as part of its Outpatient Data Quality Programme, which was introduced in hospitals in January last year in order to capture standardised data on consultant-delivered outpatient services.
The information is, however, as yet incomplete as a number of the country’s biggest hospitals have yet to report their figures. The HSE said the figure for the total number of patients waiting was likely to rise once these were made available.
Among those hospitals not included on the list are University Hospital Galway, Mid West Regional Hospital Limerick and St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin.
Thirty hospitals are compliant with the new reporting requirements on waiting times, representing some 72 per cent of total outpatient “footfall”.
Some 167,825 patients referred on or after January 1st 2011 are still waiting for an appointment. Some 71 per cent of those (118,964) have been waiting less than six months. St James’s Hospital in Dublin is the only hospital reporting no patient waiting longer than six months.
Tony O’Brien, chief operating officer of the Special Delivery Unit of the Department of Health, said the report had shone a light on a problem that had existed for a very long time. He admitted, however, that it was “undoubtedly only a partial picture” at present.
Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, he said Minister for Health Dr James Reilly would shortly set an outer limit for waiting times to ensure that no patient would wait longer than 12 months to be seen.
With regard to the number of patients referred prior to January of last year who were still waiting,
Mr O’Brien said: “Clearly it’s unacceptable. There’s no debate about that.” Patients waiting more than four years would be the “first priority”, Mr O’Brien said.
He said that once the urgent referrals were taken care of, every other referral would be dealt with in chronological order “so that we don’t see patients waiting for extraordinary lengths of time”.
New processes would include weekly monitoring of outpatient data. This would ensure that such information wasn’t being published for the first time in this form, but that it was coming out regularly and was part of the core business of every hospital in the country.
For the first time, the number of referrals in each speciality each month is now available. Of the 46,241 referrals by GPs in February this year, some 51 per cent of them were in just five specialities.
There were 8,804 referrals for general surgery, 5232 for orthopaedics, 4,061 for ear, nose and throat consultations, 2,798 for ophthalmology and 2,688 for general medicine.
Mr O’Brien said that previously, patients who had already been identified by their GP as having specific needs had been put into a “largely undifferentiated queue”.
The new reporting procedures would ensure that patients could be seen quicker. In some cases, they may not need to go to a consultant but rather to diagnostics or to a different health professional, he said.
A number of hospitals reported high percentages of non-attendance by patients for outpatient appointments.
The highest of these included St John’s Hospital in Limerick, which reported a 58.9 per cent non-attendance rate among new outpatients.
The Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital reported 35.9 per cent non-attendance, Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown had a rate of 22.8 per cent and St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny reported 18.2 per cent no-shows.
The HSE acknowledged the new programme had made “considerable demands” on acute hospitals with requirements for systems and business changes “which have not been insignificant”.
“Most, if not all, of the IT systems needed to be adapted or upgraded which has caused delays but the majority of the work is now complete.”
It also noted that the “sheer volume” of outpatient referrals and appointments had added to the complexity of implementing the programme.
'Varadkar to act on the 200 AA list' of bad speed limits and ill placed 80mph signs on Ireland’s boreen’s and roads
Conor Faughnan tells us that the AA’s campaign and report on Ireland’s poorly placed speed limits signs is to get fixed by Minister Leo Varadkar:
The AA and Conor Faughnan asked members to report bad speed limits and black spots to them up and down the country. There was a tremendous response from motorists. 20,000 people filled in our questionnaire and a further 6,000 sent in individual comments or reports, and those are still coming in says Conor Faughnan.
The pattern is not a pretty one – shambolic, daft and ludicrous limits litter the country and no county is exempt.
Above picture shows a 80mph sign down a boreen near Ballykeeran, in Co Westmeath.
And another 80mph sign in Furbo, Co Galway.
There are two distinct problems. Firstly, there is the country boreen with grass growing up the middle of it and laughable speed limit of 80kph on a shiny sign. You can find examples by the dozen in every county and every time you see one it makes a mockery of speed limits.
These are all essentially the one problem which is that the national default speed limit is 80kph. It is the local authority’s job to assess a road and select an appropriate speed limit from the list of options that the law provides for them. If a road is so minor that the local authority never even assesses it then legally it is that national speed limit that applies and has to be signposted. Hence tiny unassessed roads countrywide are all 80kph.
One change to the legislation to drop the speed limit on all minor roads would solve them all at the one time.
The second problem is about what the councils have done, as opposed to what they haven’t. The law provides a menu of speed limits – 30kph, 40kph and so on up to 120kph.
The local authority gets to select a limit from this list and apply it to a road as it sees fit. Individual authorities make their choices individually and there is not enough consistency between them.
Some are excessively picky and drop the speed limit on a major primary road down to 60kph (the N11 in Wicklow for example). Others apply 100kph where no-one in their right mind would think it appropriate.
We have reports of 100kph signs within a few yards of a bad bend or a junction and again those examples are countrywide.
On the N21 – A 100kph & ‘Slow’ together does not make sense?
Even while the campaign continues we have already compiled a list of over 200 locations like this. Some of them are very well known, like the N4 with its absurd 80Kph when four lanes wide in South Dublin while it has a 100kph limit on its most dangerous stretch in Sligo.
The AA has sent that list into the Department of Transport and Conor says he will be meeting with them shortly. As we have agreed with Minister Varadkar, the Department will be launching an initiative to get the various authorities to act on this list and set those limits correctly.
It is perhaps unfair to say that the local authorities are a law unto themselves but it feels that way to motorists sometimes. Since the road traffic act of 1994 the power to choose which limit has been theirs alone. The AA has been exasperated enough over the years that we have been highlighting this problem that we have suggested taking the power back off them.
This is against the government’s policy on maximising local powers. I’m not entirely convinced by that but then I don’t want the power for the AA and we are not trying to frustrate local democracy – we just want them to get it right once and for all says Faughnan.
We have had previous promises from previous Governments but to be fair the commitment to tackle this issue seems genuine from the Department and the Minister. The AA will work with them and we do hope that we might finally get this whole sorry mess cleaned up now.
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