During 2020, slightly over 16,000 employment work permits were issued to workers from outside the European Economic Area (EEA), despite the limited travel limitations and job opportunities due to the COVID pandemic. This has been the largest amount of work permits issued out since the beginning of issuing said permits in 2009.
Many of the companies that are searching for employees are those int eh social media, meat, or healthcare industry. Healthcare workers took up nearly a third of all work permits issued and received last year at over 5000 workers recruited from outside the EEA. The second-largest sector is the IT sector following up with around 4700 permits. Interestingly, over a third of last year’s total was issued to workers that came from India, totaling nearly 5800 permits. Following that, 1800 permits came from Brazilians and over 1000 came from Palestinian workers.
Some of the largest companies to make use of these work permits included Amazon, Accenture, Facebook, Google, and Dawn Meats which is one of Ireland’s largest meat processing companies. Despite the pandemic occurring and even at the …