IRELAND GENERAL EMPLOYMENT PERMIT: ELIGIBLE JOB, SALARY AND FEES 2026

The mistake almost nobody sees coming is not a money mistake. It is spending four months, a resignation letter and a relocation plan on a job title that could never have been sponsored — and discovering it only when the file comes back refused. Whether you are reading this in Manila, Lagos, Karachi, São Paulo, Delhi or Harare, the Ireland General Employment Permit applies the same test to all of you, and it applies it in a strict sequence. Occupation. Pay. Advertising. Employer. Skip a rung and the ladder falls.

WHAT THE PERMIT ACTUALLY IS
It is Ireland’s sponsorship route for roles that sit outside the country’s highly skilled shortage list but are still not barred from permits. Since March 2026 the standard pay floor has been €36,605 a year. A two-year permit costs €1,000, most roles require the employer to advertise locally first, and the permit binds you to one named company and one named job.

That paragraph answers the question. What follows are the eight places where the answer turns into a decision — and the country-specific variables that change the timeline depending on where in the world you are applying from.

CHECK THAT THE OCCUPATION IS NOT BARRED

Ireland does not maintain a roster of approved jobs. It maintains a roster of forbidden ones, and anything absent from that roster is potentially sponsorable. Applicants from countries with positive-list immigration systems — where you look up your job and either find it or don’t — routinely get this backwards and assume they are ineligible when they are not.

The barred roster is built around occupational classification codes, not the wording on your offer letter. This distinction is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the whole process. A company may call the role “Operations Supervisor” internally while the duties classify as elementary work. Classification decides; branding does not.

That roster was rebuilt in May 2026 and the rebuild opened doors. Pharmaceutical technicians, dental technicians, forestry workers and steel fixers were released from it outright. Narrow exceptions were also cut into categories that remain closed as a whole — certain fishing, construction and textile roles now sit inside a locked door with a small window punched through it.

Several newly opened roles carry a national ceiling rather than an open allocation. Motor mechanics operate under a cap of 1,000 permits, care workers under 1,495, seafood operatives under 100, and fish filleters under just 50. Ceilings do not announce themselves as they fill. They simply stop admitting applications, sometimes months before the year ends.

In practical terms, the occupations moving through this route are skilled trades and operational roles: electricians, welders, fitters, plumbers, carpenters, chefs, healthcare assistants, care workers, heavy goods drivers, butchers, meat processing operatives, and a defined band of hospitality management posts governed by their own caps.

TEST WHETHER THE SHORTAGE ROUTE FITS BETTER

This check costs nothing and can reshape the next decade of your life.

Where an occupation appears on Ireland’s highly skilled shortage list, that permit is nearly always the stronger instrument. It removes the local advertising requirement entirely, allows partners to join and work far sooner, and shortens the path to open residence permission to roughly two years rather than five. The 2026 review widened that list further, adding roles in agronomy, construction planning and community eye care, alongside two specialist additions tied to intellectual property and the games industry.

The catch is the pay gate. The shortage route demands €40,904 where the candidate holds a relevant degree and €68,911 where they do not. An offer landing between €36,605 and €40,904 therefore has exactly one door available to it, even where the occupation is technically listed.

SATISFY THE 2026 PAY FLOOR PRECISELY

On 1 March 2026 the standard minimum climbed from €34,000 to €36,605, an increase of a little under eight percent. Across a thirty-nine hour week that lands near €17.58 an hour. This was stage one of a phased programme running to the end of the decade, so anybody projecting a renewal in 2028 should budget for a higher number than the one printed today.

Three lower tiers sit beneath the standard rate:

€32,691 covers healthcare assistants holding a recognised Level 5 healthcare support qualification or its equivalent, along with home carers, care workers, meat processing operatives and horticultural workers.

€34,009 covers recent graduates of Irish institutions at degree level and above — a tier reinstated in 2026 in recognition that entry-level pay bands and experienced-hire pay bands are not the same market.

Hourly minimum wage rules govern the separate reactivation permit rather than this one, and should not be confused with the annual floors above.

Two technicalities sink more applications than the headline number does. The first is composition: the threshold must be met by basic salary paid through the Irish payroll system. Tips, service charges, overtime assumptions, employer-provided accommodation and non-cash benefits are stripped out of the calculation, which surprises applicants coming from hospitality and care work in particular. The second is documentation drift: contracts drawn up before March 2026 that still name €34,000 are being rejected as a matter of routine. If your offer letter predates the change, it needs reissuing rather than explaining.

Underpayment is not a first-application problem alone. At renewal, the department is looking at two full years of payroll at once, and a shortfall of a few hundred euro a year becomes very visible in that view.

GET THE LOCAL ADVERTISING TEST RIGHT

Before hiring from outside the European Economic Area for most of these roles, the employer must demonstrate that the vacancy could not be filled from within Ireland or the wider European labour market. This is the technical stage where applications most often unravel, and the applicant usually has no visibility into it.

The vacancy must be advertised through Ireland’s public employment service, on the pan-European job mobility network, and through at least one further national publication or approved medium. All of these must run at the same time for twenty-eight consecutive days. The permit application cannot be lodged until that window has fully closed, and it must be lodged within ninety days of the advertising going live.

Consistency across the paperwork is not a formality. The advertised title, location, duties and salary must match the eventual application exactly. An advertisement quoting the old €34,000 figure attached to a submission at €36,605 reads, to an assessor, as proof that the vacancy was never genuinely offered to the local market.

The requirement is waived in a defined set of circumstances: where the role pays above €64,000 annually, where the occupation sits on the highly skilled shortage list, where one of the state enterprise development agencies has recommended the position, where the applicant previously held a permit and was made redundant and gave proper notification, and where the applicant has been caring for a person with exceptional medical needs who has become dependent on them. An existing permit holder moving to a new employer also does not trigger a fresh test.

CLEAR THE EMPLOYER-SIDE CONDITIONS

Your file can be immaculate and still fail because of the company sponsoring it.

The employer must be registered with the Irish revenue authority, registered with the companies registration office where that applies, and genuinely trading in Ireland. The role must be full-time, real, and offered for a minimum of twelve months.

Then comes the workforce composition rule, which quietly ends more small-company applications than any other single provision. A permit will not issue where more than half of the company’s workforce consists of non-EEA nationals at the moment of application, and the calculation is run afresh for every individual case. A twenty-person firm with ten non-EEA staff is sitting exactly on the boundary; the eleventh crosses it and that application fails on arithmetic alone. Newly established companies registered as employers within the previous two years can be exempted where they hold a supporting letter from one of the state development agencies, and the rule has been under active review for the health and social care sector.

BUDGET THE WHOLE COST, NOT THE HEADLINE

The advertised fee is one line in a longer bill.

A new permit costs €500 where it runs for six months or less, and €1,000 where it runs from six months up to two years. Where an application is refused, or withdrawn before a decision issues, ninety percent of the fee is returned — and the refund goes to the applicant personally, meaning a worker who paid is reimbursed even where the employer filed the paperwork.

Renewals are priced higher: €750 for six months or less, and €1,500 for a renewal running up to three years.

Beyond the fee, the costs that follow depend heavily on which country you are applying from. Nationals of visa-required countries — which includes most of South Asia, much of Africa and parts of South America — must also pay for and obtain a long-stay entry visa after the permit is granted, adding both money and several weeks. Nationals of visa-exempt countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia travel on the permit alone. Every permit holder, regardless of nationality, pays €300 on arrival to register with immigration and receive the residence card.

Then there are the costs almost nobody budgets for: certified translation of qualifications and civil documents, apostille or legalisation of certificates according to your country’s procedures, professional body registration where the occupation is regulated, and skills or trade assessments where a qualification earned abroad needs mapping onto the Irish framework. In some sending countries these steps take longer than the permit decision itself.

One rule outranks all of the above. Where the employer is the applicant, the law forbids them from deducting the permit fee from your wages or recovering it from you in any other form. Any agent presenting a “processing fee” that mirrors the permit cost is describing something the legislation does not permit.

SUBMIT ONLINE AND PLAN AROUND REAL TIMELINES

Applications are filed through the department’s online permits portal. Either party may submit — employer or employee — and payment is taken inside the system at the point of submission.

The core bundle comprises the signed employment contract, a detailed job description, proof that the advertising test was completed, the employer’s tax clearance and company registration evidence, your passport, and documentation of the qualifications or experience that match you to the role.

Through 2026, new applications on this route have been running at roughly nine to eleven weeks, with renewals around ten to eleven, against five to six weeks for the shortage-list route. Employers accredited under the trusted partner arrangement move faster. Where an assessor issues a request for further information, the clock effectively stalls until you respond, which is why incomplete files routinely add a month or more.

UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU HOLD AFTERWARDS

A first permit typically issues for up to two years and is renewable, but the number that matters most is five.

The permit attaches to one employer and one role. Present guidance expects roughly nine months of service with the original employer before a move can be sought, redundancy aside. Changing employer means a fresh application, not a renewal — renewals exist only to continue the same job with the same company under the same title.

Family reunification is where this route is weakest against the shortage-list alternative, and applicants planning to bring a partner or children should treat the wait as a real planning constraint rather than a formality.

After sixty months of employment on this permit type, the holder becomes eligible to apply for open residence permission, which lifts the permit requirement altogether and is a materially better position than another renewal.

THE 2026 NUMBERS IN ONE PLACE

Item	2026 position
Standard minimum salary (from 1 March 2026)	€36,605
Care workers, home carers, healthcare assistants, meat and horticultural operatives	€32,691
Recent Irish graduates, degree level and above	€34,009
Shortage-list route comparison (with / without degree)	€40,904 / €68,911
New permit fee — up to 6 months	€500
New permit fee — 6 to 24 months	€1,000
Renewal fee — up to 6 months / up to 36 months	€750 / €1,500
Refund where refused or withdrawn	90% of fee
Immigration registration card on arrival	€300
Local advertising period	28 consecutive days
Application deadline after advertising begins	90 days
Salary level exempting the advertising test	Above €64,000
Typical decision time, new application	~9–11 weeks
Service required before open residence permission	60 months

PRINTABLE PRE-APPLICATION CHECKLIST

☐ Occupation checked against the barred list by classification code, not job title
☐ Any applicable national cap confirmed as still open
☐ Shortage-list route tested as an alternative before committing
☐ Contract states basic annual pay at or above the correct 2026 tier
☐ Threshold met by basic salary alone, with no benefits counted in
☐ Vacancy advertised across all required channels simultaneously
☐ Advertising ran twenty-eight consecutive days, with dated proof retained
☐ Application lodged inside the ninety-day window
☐ Employer registered, trading, and above the workforce composition threshold
☐ Qualifications translated, legalised and — where regulated — assessed
☐ Entry visa requirement confirmed for your nationality
☐ Full cost mapped, including the €300 registration card
☐ Written confirmation that no cost is being recovered from your pay
☐ Complete document set assembled before the online file is opened
☐ Start date planned twelve to sixteen weeks out, plus visa time

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The Ireland General Employment Permit works by exclusion rather than inclusion: absence from the barred list is what makes a role sponsorable, and classification — not job title — decides which side of that line you sit on.
• The standard pay floor moved to €36,605 in March 2026, with reduced tiers at €32,691 and €34,009, and further scheduled rises before the decade closes.
• Twenty-eight consecutive days of simultaneous local advertising is mandatory for most roles, with filing required inside ninety days and an exemption above €64,000.
• Budget €1,000 plus €300 for registration, then add your own country’s visa, translation, legalisation and qualification-recognition costs — the variable that differs most between applicants.
• Ninety percent of the fee is refunded on refusal, and it is unlawful for the fee to be recovered from your wages under any description.

WHAT TO DO NEXT

1. Ask the prospective employer, today, for the occupational classification of the duties and the basic annual salary in writing.
2. Check that classification against both the barred list and the shortage list before anyone spends a cent.
3. Where the role is capped, confirm the cap is still open before the twenty-eight-day advertising cycle begins.
4. Get the employer’s workforce composition confirmed in writing.
5. Start your document legalisation and qualification recognition in parallel with the advertising period, not after the permit issues — in many countries this is the longest single step.
6. Confirm whether your nationality requires an entry visa, and add that processing time to your plan.
7. Verify every figure here against the issuing department’s own published pages on the day you file. The thresholds and the occupation lists both moved during 2026, and the phased increases continue.

FAQ