Call for inclusion of chefs on critical skills list to reduce labour shortage

Critical skills employment permits (CSEP) must be extended to chefs in order to assist the “maligned” hospitality industry address a significant labour shortage, an Oireachtas committee has heard.

The CSEP seeks to attract highly skilled people in to the labour market with the aim of encouraging them to take up permanent residence in the State. It is intended to target areas in which employers are experiencing a skills shortage in Ireland.

Occupations such as ICT professionals, professional engineers and technologists are catered for under this type of employment permit.

However, Paddy Lynn, chief executive of WeHaveChefs, a hospitality recruitment firm, has called for the eligibility of these permits to be extended to chefs in order to aid in the recruitment of professionals from outside the EU.

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Fáilte Ireland estimated earlier this year there were about 40,000 vacancies in the tourism sector, with about a quarter of those being for kitchen staff.

The tourism body’s most recent research, published last month, found 86 per cent of restaurants and 84 per cent of hotels had vacancies for chefs.

Speaking at a meeting of the joint Oireachtas committee on public petitions on Thursday, Mr Lynn said hospitality was a “Cinderella industry” and was under “extreme pressure”.

“It is an afterthought a lot of the time. Hospitality falls between many stools and departments. There’s no department which oversees the whole thing,” he said.

Mr Lynn said the overall solution to the labour shortages in the industry was not to recruit chefs from overseas.

“It’s to encourage our youth to immerse themselves back into the industry and pride themselves in that. But we’re at a critical moment, we do need chefs on the ground. We need more than chefs. The hospitality industry in general is under severe pressure.”

Mr Lynn said labour shortages had only become an issue “since Covid, since this mass exodus of people”.

“We hadn’t needed critical skills [permits] at this level before, but we do now. And the only way to solve this is by their addition to this list.”

Under the legislation, those who are eligible for the CSEP must have an annual remuneration of at least €32,000 and have a third-level degree in the field for which they were granted a CSEP.

“Third-level degree stipulation must be removed. Some of the most influential, powerful, successful and productive members of our society and industries. It’s an archaic measure of suitability, that is standing obnoxiously in the way,” Mr Lynn said.

Chefs are already on the general permits list since 2020, however Mr Lynn said it took four or five months to get chefs to Ireland under this scheme.

By adding the profession to the critical skills list, that waiting time would be reduced to four-six weeks, he said.

The State’s visa rules also require the job to be advertised for 28 days and there must be no suitable European Economic Area candidates before it can be filled from outside, which adds to the delays, he added.