Before you offer the job, you need a real answer to one question: when can this person actually start? This page tracks the current Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment (DETE) processing dates and sets them inside the full hire-to-start timeline — so you can plan a start date you can stand over, not a guess.
The headline processing date is only one stage of the journey. Quote it on its own and you will promise a start date you can't hit. Below are the current decision-queue dates, what they mean in practice, and the steps that sit either side of them.
Current DETE processing dates (July 2026)
DETE processes employment permit applications in date order of receipt of the fully completed form and fee. The "processing date" is the day's applications the department is currently deciding — so the gap between that date and today is roughly how long a freshly submitted application waits for a decision.
As of 30 June 2026, these are the dates being processed, taken directly from the DETE current processing dates page:
| Application type | Now deciding applications received on | Approx. decision wait |
|---|---|---|
| Critical Skills Employment Permit (new) | 15 June 2026 | ~2 weeks |
| New General Employment Permit | 21 May 2026 | ~6 weeks |
| All other new applications (excl. CSEP, GEP, ICT) | 15 May 2026 | ~7 weeks |
| Intra-Company Transfer (new) | 15 May 2026 | ~7 weeks |
| Intra-Company Transfer (renewal) | 26 March 2026 | ~14 weeks |
| All renewal applications | 25 March 2026 | ~14 weeks |
| Reviews / appeals | 16 December 2025 | ~6.5 months |
Source: DETE, current processing dates for employment permits, as of 30 June 2026. The "approx. decision wait" is the calendar gap from that date and is a guide only — DETE updates these figures regularly, so check the live page before you commit to a start date. We keep this tracker current.
Two things stand out this month. First, the Critical Skills queue is currently shorter than the General Employment Permit queue — the faster permit is living up to its name. Second, renewals are sitting at around three months, so if you have a worker whose permit is due to expire, start the renewal early. You can apply to renew a General Employment Permit up to four months before expiry, and at the current pace you should.
What these dates actually mean
The processing date is a decision-queue measure, not a total timeline. It answers one narrow question: once your fully completed application is in the system, how long until someone at DETE makes a decision on it.
It does not include:
- The time before submission — defining the role, checking eligibility and the 50:50 rule, and running the Labour Market Needs Test where it applies.
- The time after the permit is granted — the worker's entry visa, travel, and registering immigration permission on arrival.
It also assumes a clean application. If DETE has to come back to you for a missing document or a wrong figure, your application effectively leaves the queue while you fix it, and the clock you were watching no longer applies. A returned application is the single most common reason a "six-week" permit turns into a four-month one.
The full hire-to-start timeline
Here is where the decision queue actually sits in the journey for a typical General Employment Permit hire from outside the EEA — for example, a worker from the Philippines.
Stage 1 — Define the role and check eligibility. Confirm the role is permit-eligible, set a salary that meets the legal minimum, and check the 50:50 rule (at least half your staff must be EEA nationals on the day you apply). For most General Employment Permit roles the salary floor is €36,605 a year; construction trades are governed by the Sectoral Employment Order, with a craftsperson minimum of roughly €46,600. Allow a week or two.
Stage 2 — Labour Market Needs Test (most GEPs). You advertise the vacancy with the Department of Social Protection Employment Services / EURES network and on one additional online platform, for 28 continuous days, without amending it. The permit application can only go in after the 28 days are complete. The print newspaper requirement was removed by the Employment Permits Act 2024. Critical Skills roles skip this stage entirely. Allow at least four to five weeks.
Stage 3 — DETE decision queue. This is the stage the tracker above measures. At current dates, roughly six weeks for a General Employment Permit and about two weeks for a Critical Skills permit.
Stage 4 — Entry visa. Once the permit is granted, a worker from a visa-required country applies for a long-stay employment visa to enter Ireland. This is a separate process handled by Immigration Service Delivery, and it adds several weeks on its own.
Stage 5 — Travel, arrival and registration. The worker arranges travel, relocates, and registers their immigration permission (IRP) after arriving. Allow a few more weeks for onboarding and the practicalities of relocation.
Add those stages together and around six months from starting the process to the worker's first day is realistic for a General Employment Permit hire. The decision queue you see on the DETE page is one stage of five. Anyone quoting you "a few weeks" is quoting Stage 3 in isolation.
CSEP vs GEP: which is faster
The permit type changes the timeline more than anything else you control.
A Critical Skills Employment Permit (CSEP) is the faster route when the role qualifies. It skips the 28-day Labour Market Needs Test, its decision queue is currently shorter, and it gives the worker a quicker path to long-term residence. The catch is eligibility — the role has to be on the Critical Skills Occupations List, which covers roles such as nurses, doctors, engineers and certain IT positions.
A General Employment Permit (GEP) covers most other eligible roles — care assistants, chefs, construction trades, agriculture and meat processing. It usually requires the Labour Market Needs Test, which adds the best part of a month before you can even apply.
So before you assume the GEP timeline, check whether your role qualifies for the Critical Skills route. If it does, you remove a full stage from the journey. Our GEP vs CSEP comparison walks through which roles fit where.
Does Trusted Partner status speed it up?
It helps, but not in the way employers often assume.
Trusted Partner registration removes the need to resubmit your company documents with every application. Once you are registered, the employer side of each application is lighter and cleaner, which means fewer errors and fewer returned applications. For an employer hiring more than one worker, that is a genuine time saving.
What it does not do, on the current DETE figures, is give you a separate fast-track decision queue. The department publishes one set of processing dates by permit type and works through them in date order of receipt. So the real benefit of Trusted Partner is on the preparation side and in keeping your application clean enough to stay in the queue — not a shortcut past it. That distinction matters when you are planning a start date.
What delays employers most
In our experience, the department's queue is rarely the thing that blows a timeline. The avoidable delays are:
- A returned application. A missing document, a salary below the legal floor for the role, or a mismatch between the advert and the application sends it back. You lose the queue position and the weeks already spent.
- A Labour Market Needs Test run wrong. Amending the advert mid-way, using the wrong platform, or letting a notice lapse before 28 days voids the test. You only find out when you submit, and you start the 28 days again.
- Leaving the visa to the end. Treating the entry visa as an afterthought once the permit lands adds dead time. The visa step can be lined up so it follows on cleanly.
- Renewing late. With renewals near three months, a permit allowed to drift toward expiry puts the worker's right to keep working at risk.
None of these are about the department being slow. They are about the application being right the first time.
How to plan a realistic start date
Work backwards from the permit type. For a Critical Skills role, you can reasonably tell a candidate they will be starting within a couple of months, visa and travel allowing. For a General Employment Permit role, plan on roughly six months and treat anything faster as a bonus.
Then protect that timeline by getting the parts you control right: the right salary, a clean Labour Market Needs Test, a complete application, and the visa lined up to follow the permit. That is exactly the work we take off your desk.
We can't change DETE's decision queue. What we do is make sure none of your time is lost to a returned application, a botched advertising test, or a visa left until last. We run the permit process end to end — for both Critical Skills and General Employment Permit hires — so the start date you give your candidate is one you can actually keep.
Planning a hire and need a realistic start date? Talk to us about the role and we'll map the timeline for your specific permit type — free, no obligation.