Ireland Green Card Scheme?

Hi,

A year ago, I was very excited to learn about a proposed "Green Card" system that would allow skilled workers to migrate to Ireland. This was written about in the press, but, strangely, all seems to have gone quiet on the issue. I tried researching government migration sites, and also workpermit.com, but could find no information on this at all. (I am a US citizen who would liketo settle in Europe, so this would be most interesting to me!)

Are Ireland still planning to implement this project? If so, when will they do it, and why has it taken so long for them to get to this stage? If not, why did they change their views so sharply?

Below is a link from a newspaper in 2005 describing the proposed scheme, for more details.

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/ ... NCARD.html

Any information or updates anyone might have would be most appreciated.

Best regards, Tony

Probably because right now the current Minister for Justice (Michael McDowell) is mainly concerned with illegal immigrants, overstayers, illegal workers, processing refugee applicants etc, and less interested in clarifying or ammending the process to allow for skilled workers.

Follow his policies and approach and you will understand why this scheme still hasn't been put into place. As far as I can tell, he is not really in favour of immigration apart from in the short term to satisfy a skills shortage, but not in the long term, to welcome these people staying on a more permanent basis.