The Court of Appeal has quashed the refusal of an employment permit application after finding that the Minister could not impose a €30,000 minimum salary threshold through an administrative scheme.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Gerard Hogan on 26 February 2016, allowed Nisar Ali’s appeal from a High Court decision dismissing his application. The Court of Appeal set aside the Minister’s decision refusing his permit application on 13 May 2014. It did not grant the permit itself.
Ali, a Pakistani national who had lived lawfully in Ireland as a student since August 2007, applied for a permit on 10 April 2014. He had been offered full-time work as a sales support assistant at an annual salary of €18,000. His student permission allowed him to work limited hours during term and more during holidays. The judgment said a permit would allow him to work full time throughout the year and enable his wife and child, who lived in Pakistan, to join him in Ireland.
The Minister refused the application on several stated grounds, including that the job was in an ineligible occupation and the offered pay fell below the department’s €30,000 threshold. The judgment identifies the salary requirement as the essential basis of the refusal under challenge.
The appeal concerned how the Employment Permits Act 2006 treats the Minister’s power to consider government economic policy and the separate power to set minimum remuneration requirements. Section 14 allows the Minister to set a minimum pay level by regulation, subject to specified criteria and a maximum two-year period. Such regulations must also be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas.
The Court of Appeal held that this specific regulation-making power could not be bypassed by setting the same threshold through an administrative scheme. It concluded that the Minister had acted beyond the powers conferred by the Act by requiring applicants to meet the €30,000 threshold without regulations made under section 14.
The court therefore allowed the appeal and quashed the refusal decision. The ruling addressed the legality of the salary criterion used in this decision; it did not determine that Ali was entitled to a permit.