How to hire international workers in Ireland

There are several employment permit types, and the two that matter for most employers are the General Employment Permit and the Critical Skills Employment Permit. Which one applies depends on the occupation and the salary, and it decides everything downstream: whether you advertise first, how long the permit runs, and what the worker's family and long-term position look like.

The current rules for each, as the Department publishes them, are linked from our labour market needs test page, which carries the check date beside each claim. What we will not do here is quote the thresholds as numbers, because they change and a stale figure on a web page has cost employers real applications.

• A job offer and a contract of employment signed by you and the employer before anything is submitted. Applications must reach the Department at least 12 weeks before the start date.
• The right permit for the job. Most trades and driving roles go through a General Employment Permit, which is issued for 2 years and can be renewed. Roles on the Critical Skills list use a Critical Skills Employment Permit.
• Pay at or above the minimum for the permit. For a General Employment Permit the Department currently lists it as generally EUR 36,605 a year, with lower figures for meat processing, horticulture, healthcare assistants and home support. Check the official figure for your role before you rely on it.

The full requirements list, with its source and check date

The Department keeps two lists that decide the route: the Critical Skills Occupations List (roles that get the Critical Skills permit) and the Ineligible Occupations List (roles that cannot get a permit at all, with named exceptions). A job on neither list generally goes the General Employment Permit route with a labour market needs test.

The lists are revised, and the revisions are where employers get caught: a role that was ineligible last year may have an exception now, and the other way round. Our permit check searches the current published lists by job title and tells you which list a role sits on, if any, and what the exception wording says.

Check a job title against the lists

Each permit type has a minimum annual remuneration, and it is assessed on the contract you submit, so the contract has to be signed by both sides before the application goes in. The rate has to be right for the permit type, the hours have to be stated, and the job description has to match the occupation you are claiming. A mismatch between the advert, the contract and the application form is the most common reason for a refusal we see.

Pay the market rate, not the minimum. A worker who arrives to find they are the lowest paid person on the floor leaves, and you have paid for a permit that walks out the door. Our own rule is that every candidate we place earns a fair market salary for the role; it is written into how we price.

For most General Employment Permit applications the job has to be advertised first, in the set places for the set period, to show that no one already in Ireland or the EEA was available to take it. The Department publishes exactly where and for how long, and the evidence has to be kept and submitted with the application.

It is not a formality and it is not a trap. Advertise properly, keep the screenshots and the responses, be able to say why any local applicant was not suitable, and it passes. Miss a day or a channel and it fails, and the clock restarts.

The labour market needs test, explained with the Department's wording and check date

Look in Ireland first. There are qualified people already here with the right to work, or already on a permit and eligible to move to a new employer, and they start sooner. We always show you those before anyone overseas.

For the numbers you cannot find here, recruit overseas, and test before you offer. Every trade candidate we put forward has been assessed on the tools by a qualified assessor at our own sites in Johannesburg, Manila or Dubai or a partner centre near them, on the process and positions your job actually needs; drivers are assessed on a practical drive with the licence route confirmed. You interview on video, you choose, and nobody books a flight on the strength of a CV.

Each source country has its own exit rules alongside the Irish permit: the Philippines, South Africa, the UAE, India. Each guide covers both ends.

The application goes to the Department through its online system, with the signed contract, the advertising evidence where the test applied, the company's details and the worker's documents. The Department publishes its current processing times by permit type and they move with the queue; ask us and you get the figure as it stands that week, not a number from a brochure.

Two things decide whether it goes through first time: whether the role and pay genuinely meet the rules for the permit type you chose, and whether every document says the same thing. We prepare the application with you so it does.

With the permit issued, the worker applies for an employment visa if their nationality requires one, travels, and registers with immigration after arrival for the residence permission that goes with the employment permit. Their family's position depends on the permit type and is worth understanding before you make the offer, because it is often the deciding factor for the candidate.

The first month is where placements fail, and it is rarely about the work. Accommodation, a bank account, a PPS number, the commute, the first payslip: we handle the arrival side with the worker, and our free settling-in guides by county and town are theirs from the day the offer is signed.

A permit hire is an investment, and the return is in years two and three. The things that keep people: fair pay against the people beside them, a clear route to renewal and to longer-term residence, their family's position understood from the start, and a manager who knows what the first winter in Ireland is like for someone who has never seen one.

We stay in touch with every worker we place after arrival, and with you, because a problem raised in week three is fixable and the same problem in month six is a resignation. Their rights at work in Ireland are published on this site in plain language, and we would rather they read them here than hear a garbled version elsewhere.