The month in numbers

March 2026 at a glance

This month

2,933

Up 4% on the month before

Same month last year

3,191

Down 8% on it

Year to date

8,975

Down 10% on 2025

Employers with a permit this month

1,511

245 for the first time

Twelve months to March

1.7k

Apr 25

1.8k

May

1.7k

Jun

2.2k

Jul

2.7k

Aug

2.6k

Sep

3.1k

Oct

2.9k

Nov

2.4k

Dec

3.2k

Jan 26

2.8k

Feb

2.9k

Mar

2,933

Feb

2,817

Jan 26

3,225

Dec

2,440

Nov

2,889

Oct

3,092

Sep

2,627

Aug

2,661

Jul

2,180

Jun

1,684

May

1,820

Apr 25

1,668

Permits issued per month, all employers, all permit types.

What the numbers say

Ireland issued 2,933 employment permits in March 2026, up 4% on February and down 8% on March 2025.

That brings the year to 8,975 permits, down 10% on the same point in 2025.

1,511 employers received at least one permit in the month, 245 of them for the first time.

Bus Átha Cliath - Dublin Bus took the most, with 67.

Busiest counties: Dublin (1,117), Cork (200), Meath (131).

Who took them

The 15 employers issued the most permits in March

Open an employer for its month-by-month pattern, its address and how to approach it.

#	Employer	County	Mar	Month before	Mar 2025	2026 to date
1	Bus Átha Cliath - Dublin Bus	Dublin	67	31	0	98
2	Redwood Extended Care Facility Unlimited Company	Meath	28	66	82	121
3	InisCare Limited	Dublin	26	23	13	67
4	Resilience Healthcare Limited	Clare	25	13	14	66
5	Costern Unlimited Company	Dublin	22	7	8	56
6	Applus Inspection Services Ireland Limited	Dublin	19	37	26	96
7	Blackden Limited	Meath	19	1	5	24
8	Bus Éireann - Irish Bus		19	3	4	25
9	Google Ireland Limited	Dublin	18	19	34	74
10	NT R&D Logistics Systems Limited	Wexford	18	6	0	44
11	TLI Group Limited	Kerry	18	1	1	21
12	Kel-Tech Engineering (Waterford) Limited	Waterford	16	4	6	47
13	Microsoft Ireland Research Unlimited Company	Dublin	16	4	4	27
14	Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Drogheda		16	13	3	32
15	AAG Hangar 1 Limited	Clare	15	15	0	37

New to permits

245 employers took their first ever permit in March

A first permit usually means a company has just found out it can hire this way. These are the ones with the most.

Employer	County	Permits
I.P.Passenger Services Limited		7
Altura Technical Services Limited	Kerry	6
Dahlia Productions DAC	Dublin	6
Errigal Contracts Ireland Limited	Monaghan	6
Ted Brennan Motors Limited	Monaghan	6
Forsythia Productions DAC	Dublin	5
Peril Construction Limited	Sligo	5
L. Lynch and Co Limited	Dublin	4
Port Douglas Contractors Ltd	Roscommon	4
Seán & Justin Murphy Limited		4

Where

Permits by county in March

Counted from the employers' registered addresses, so a head office in Dublin carries the permits for sites elsewhere.

Dublin (491 employers)

1,117

Cork (97 employers)

200

Meath (36 employers)

131

Kildare (36 employers)

98

Galway (41 employers)

75

Limerick (38 employers)

75

Clare (17 employers)

58

Kerry (14 employers)

47

Wexford (15 employers)

44

Waterford (17 employers)

44

Earlier months

Every Permit Pulse

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Source: Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Employment Permit Statistics. Contains Irish Public Sector Data licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. A permit issued to a company is a record of a past application. It is not a vacancy and not a promise of sponsorship.

Is this your organisation? To update what is shown here, or for more information, email us. The figures come from the published register; we cannot change the register itself, only how it is presented here.

Permit Pulse is compiled by Sama Talent Group from the Department's published permits-by-company figures. Figures for a month can be revised in later publications.

Permit Pulse: March 2026