Ireland
Can a permit holder's family join them in Ireland, and can they work?
Employers ask this because good candidates ask it first. The answer depends on which permit the worker holds, and the two Departments involved split the question between them: Justice decides who may come and stay; Enterprise decides who needs a permit to work.
Checked against the official pages listed below on 27 September 2026.
Family of a Critical Skills permit holder
The Department's Critical Skills page says holders may request immediate family reunification through the immigration service. Since 6 March 2019, spouses and de facto partners of Critical Skills holders no longer need an employment permit: the Department of Justice grants them Stamp 1 conditions giving direct access to the labour market.
Other dependants recognised by the Department of Justice, once resident, may apply for a Dependant/Partner/Spouse Employment Permit for a job they have been offered. The Department's page sets the conditions: the dependant is accompanying the permit holder, resides in the State (an application from outside Ireland is refused), is not in full-time education, has a job offer at or above the National Minimum Wage, and the primary holder remains in employment on a valid Critical Skills permit. No Labour Market Needs Test applies and there is no fee. The permit runs to the expiry of the primary permit, up to two years at first and three on renewal.
Family of a General Employment Permit holder
The Department of Enterprise's dependant permit page covers dependants of Critical Skills holders and researchers on hosting agreements only. For the family of a General Employment Permit holder, whether and when they may join is a matter of the Department of Justice's immigration policy on family reunification, which we do not restate here because it is theirs to set and it changes. The Department of Justice's immigration service publishes it at irishimmigration.ie. Whether a family member who has been admitted then needs an employment permit to work is the Department of Enterprise's question, answered on the pages linked below.
Married to an EEA national
A separate case from the Department's FAQ: a non-EEA national married to, or in a civil partnership with, an EEA national who has been granted Stamp 4 permission does not need an employment permit. Where the EEA spouse is not accompanying them, a permit is needed, but no fee is payable; the Department's fees page lists the documents required for that waiver.
What it means for the employer
For a Critical Skills hire, family can follow quickly and a spouse or partner can work without any permit application from anyone, which is often what makes an offer acceptable. For a General Employment Permit hire, the candidate should be told plainly that family reunification is decided by the Department of Justice on its own rules and timetable. We say this to every candidate before an offer is accepted, so that nobody arrives with the wrong expectation; it is one of the reasons our placements stay.
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General information for employers, not legal advice. Checked against the official pages above on 27 September 2026. The rules and figures change; the official pages are the authority, and we confirm the current position before anything is submitted.