Heinlein wrote:9jeirean, the original question was: does a WV holder need a business permission to setup a business? The answer is NO, to the best of my knowledge and based on the email I received from INIS.
Then, from the practical point of view, if you want to set up a business in Ireland being on WV/Stamp4, you have to first exclude Sole Trader because you have to be employed full-time. So Sole Trader is definitely not for you.
Further, among the remaining options is a Limited Company, which requires partnership with someone else, and there is a rule of at least one EEA director when forming a company. I should have mentioned that in the beginning, sorry about that.
No problem at all Heinlein. Knowing INIS and their penchant for making up the rules as they go along, it didn't come as a surprise you got that response. As someone who had gone through the works myself I would like to see that policy made official, rather than something one would have to write in secrecy to receive a response to . I am sure you can understand how much relief it would be for a lot of people on the WV/WA scheme to be able to get an independent business going for themselves. As I said before, the time couldn't be more apt. The state is desperately in need of entrepreneurs.
Let's look at it this way, the last of the WV/WA permits were issued in December 2005, which means anyone on the scheme would have been at least 4 years legally resident and tax compliance in the state anyway. When you look at the list of professions on the scheme, these are cutting edge high skills jobs that should be driving the so called smart economy that the government has been harping on about. Say an IT specialist currently on the scheme is expressed allowed to set up his own IT consultancy firm, you can imagine the potential knock-on effect on possible jobs creation for others not to talk of the economic contribution it brings to the state no matter how little. Let's look at another example: the current speech and Language therapy (SLT) waiting list in some part of Dublin runs up to 24 months, same goes to other allied health services covered under the WV/WA scheme. Say a SLT is allowed to set up their own SLT clinic, let those who can afford to pay for private therapy attend, that's a huge relief on the overstretched HSE resources and a relief to the parents of such children that would benefit from such service.
The point here is, there's a lot of rhetorics about the vision for a smart economy and all that jazz. The reality is there's a lot of potentials on the ground. Failed banks and NAMA are not the only legacy of the Celtic Tiger era. Appropriate and positively oriented policies to harness the potentials in the right directions would go along way. Immigration is not only all about bogus asylum seekers and professional baby mamas & Papas.
