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“I’VE MISSED THREE of my daughter’s birthdays,” Bethel Muzaya, a healthcare worker from Zimbabwe said.
“And I’m unfortunately going to have to miss a fourth one too. It’s heartbreaking”.
Bethel has worked in Ireland as a healthcare assistant since 2022, and has a husband and two children who live in Zimbabwe.
As a non-EU citizen, Bethel cannot bring her family to live with her here in Ireland – she earns less than the required amount needed to apply.
She would need an annual salary of at least €41,912 to apply for a visa that would allow her entire family to join her here.
“The government is telling me and workers like me that I can’t bring my family here – so who is going to look after us if something happens?”
Healthcare assistants (HCAs) from non-EU countries who are working in Irish nursing homes and hospitals are currently seeking the right to bring their spouses and children here to live with them, as some have been separated from their families for years while employed in Ireland.
Roughly 2,000 healthcare assistants who come from countries outside of the EU are unable to have their family members with them in Ireland because their earnings are below the allowed threshold for them to claim reunification rights.
Wages increased in January this year, when the government introduced a mandated minimum annual salary of €30,000 for new healthcare assistant contracts.
Despite this, many HCAs on older contracts work for just over the minimum wage, currently valued at just over €27,000 annually. Previous healthcare employment permits which were ‘live’ when the minimum salary was introduced were not impacted by the introduction of the new minimum salary.
The salary threshold for non-EU workers to apply for a visa that would allow their spouse to join them in Ireland remains at €30,000.
For children, the required income goes up – workers need a minimum net income of €36,660 to bring one child to Ireland, and that level increases further for multiple children.
Bethel was one of a number of representatives from Unite the Union, Migrant Rights Centre Ireland and Migrant Nurses Ireland to speak at an Oireachtas briefing hosted by People Before profit-Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger this afternoon, which outlined workers’ demands for reform.
People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger has joined a number of migrant healthcare workers from @unitetheunion and @MigrantRightsIr outside Leinster House campaigning for the right to bring their spouses and children to Ireland to live with them@thejournal_ie pic.twitter.com/4xIlBE0szi
— Andrew Walsh (@AndyBreathnach) April 30, 2025
HCAs are asking Oireachtas members to press the government to end the obligatory waiting period before an application can be made – currently non-EU workers must wait 12 months after arriving in Ireland to apply for their families to join them here.
They are also demanding that the government abolish the income thresholds for family reunification, so that any employment permit holder in full-time work is eligible to apply for family reunification.
“My kids are growing up without their mother while I take care of someone else’s children in Ireland, so we want that unfairness to stop,” Bethel said.
Referencing a recent period of illness that resulted in her having to stay overnight in a hospital, Bethel said that there was “no one to take care of me”.
“That’s hard. If your family can come to your rescue, they can come and see you. That makes a difference. When you are out here alone, it’s different.”
Another health care worker, Takondwa Magombo, told The Journal that he married his wife in Malawi over two years ago, but she has been unable to come to Ireland.
Takondwa described the current government policy on the issue as “simply unfair”.
I’ve been here close to 15 years now and I fell in love with this place, so I do not understand why my wife cannot join me,” he said.
“It is hard on us and our marriage, we’re always so far apart.”
“She would be happy to be employed here, to provide for Ireland with taxes and hard work, but she simply cannot. I believe that needs to change”.
Unite regional officer Michael O’Brien said that the “arbitrary wait times and onerous income thresholds” that migrant HCAs face to bring their families to Ireland “must be scrapped”.
“There’s a particularly cruel irony that those that are charged with facilitating caring for our elderly, caring for vulnerable young people, vulnerable adults, are not being permitted to care for their own immediate families outside of their own work hours,” O’Brien told The Journal.
“We’re just saying that if the government believes that those who are Irish or European and have a full time income of any description, including a minimum wage income, can raise a family on that income, then we think that the waiting times that they put in front of migrant workers and the arbitrarily high income thresholds that they face just have to go.”
Ruth Coppinger, who joined the migrant healthcare workers outside the Dáil, told The Journal that it is “high time” that government policy change to allow the families of non-EU workers to come to Ireland.
“If you’re a resident working in this country for a period of time, you should be able to bring your family over, and actually the vast majority of their family members are also health workers, so we’d be assisting the shortage that’s in the healthcare industry,” Coppinger said.
“They need to have proper rights and recognition.It’s very upsetting to hear that many of them have been kept away from their own children for such a long time.”
According to a report from consultants KPMG, Ireland could face a shortage of about 62,000 staff to fill healthcare assistant roles over the next 12 years.
Coppinger added that non-EU healthcare workers are” assisting the shortage” in the healthcare industry here.
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