New work permits with sophisticated security features are to be issued from next month in an attempt to combat the illegal use of forged documents by immigrant workers.
Officials say that the new permits will be much more difficult to copy than the current documents, forgeries of which they say can be bought in South Asia for up to €6,000.
The new documents, which will be issued by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment from January 2nd, contain watermarks, ultra-violet features and special inks.
Key details about the employee and employer, as well as a photograph of the worker, will be laminated on to the permit. The original document will then be sent to the employee abroad, who will present it to immigration officials at their port of entry to the State.
Currently, the original document is held by the Irish employer, with only a photocopy forwarded to the employee, making it much easier to forge.
There had been cases of employers being presented with work permits by newly-arrived immigrant workers whom they had not recruited, a Department official said. In a recently-discovered forgery, 11 Romanian nationals had arrived in the State with work permits stating that they were to be employed as kitchen porters in a small coffee shop in Dublin.
Work permits are necessary for workers from outside the European Economic Area, which is comprised of EU member-states as well as Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. They can be issued for a maximum of one year at a time.
More than 40,000 work permits have been issued this year. Up to 18,000 of these were renewals of existing permits.