I've been tasked to build an intranet application to run on a JSP
server which captures a lot of user data and writes it to an Oracle
database. Having read up a little on JSP applications there appears to
be a lot of Java programming involved, and we're very light on those
skills in our dept. Is there an easy way of doing this without writing
reams of code?

Greetings!

You're going to hate this answer.  

No.

Have a nice day.

Oh?  A few pointers would be nice?  Ok.  

Seriously, this isn't that difficult.  If you are willing to learn and
try a few new things, you'll be able to accomplish this within a few
weeks.  This assumes the database and JSP server are already set up
and running well.

JSP pages are really quite simple to build.  All the hard parts are
done in the background by the application server.

What you are going to be doing is something like this:

1) build HTML form that submits the data to your JSP page.
2) the JSP page will 
* accept the data (automatic)
* Make a connection to the DB (you write a few lines of code - see
JDBC tutorials below)
* run a few queries to put the data in the database.  (again, a few
lines of code)
* print out the results (a few more lines of code)
* clean up, close DB connections.

You will need to know how to get the data, how to put the data in the
database and how to connect to the database.

The book, "Beginning JSP Web Development" , ISBN 1861002092 looks like
it would be most helpful to you.  It covers the tasks you will need to
accomplish to build your application.

I wish you the best of luck, and I think you will find this to be a
fun and challenging project.  If you need more detail, please request
a clarification.

Further reading:

Java Servlet and JSP Tutorial
http://www.apl.jhu.edu/~hall/java/Servlet-Tutorial/

Simple JSP Tutorial
http://www.visualbuilder.com/jsp/tutorial/

Sun's JSP Tutorial
http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/docs.html

Sun's JDBC Basics and Tutorial
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/jdbc/

Basic JDBC Tutorial
http://misdb.bpa.arizona.edu/~mis696g/Reports/Yousub/BASICTUT.html

Search Terms:
jsp tutorial
beginning jsp
jdbc tutorial

This answer appears to confirm my fears that having significant Java
skills is essential for this task.

Umm...
Should you really be accepting a job to "build" an intranet
application based on JSP if you don't have programmers available?

Just a thought.  

Have you checked out freshmeat.net & sourceforge.net?

And people wonder why they have to actually pay someone $80K a year to do this?

It may be possible to reduce the need to write Java using custom tags.
We have taken this route and so far so good.