Employment Permit Processing Times in Ireland (2026): When Can Your New Hire Actually Start?

Before you offer the job, you need a real answer to one question: when can this person actually start? This guide explains what Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment (DETE) processing dates actually mean and sets them inside the full hire-to-start timeline — so you can plan a start date you can stand over, not a guess. For current figures, see our permit processing times tracker, updated fortnightly.

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 is what the dates mean in practice, and the steps that sit either side of them.

Where to find current DETE processing dates

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.

For the current figures, see our permit processing times tracker — updated fortnightly against DETE's published dates, and it flags which queues have moved since the last benchmark. That page shows the live numbers. This post explains what they mean in practice and where they sit in the full hire-to-start journey.

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, Swiss or UK citizens 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 €48,150 a year since 1 August 2026. Allow a week or two.

Stage 2 — Labour Market Needs Test (most GEPs). You advertise the vacancy on JobsIreland.ie, on EURES, and on at least one other online platform, for 28 continuous days, without amending it. JobsIreland and EURES are both required — registering on jobsireland.ie covers both in one step, as DSP places the vacancy on EURES automatically. The third platform, a commercial jobs board, you place separately. 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 our processing times tracker measures, and the one stage whose length you cannot influence. It moves every week or two, and it is different for each permit type — check the tracker before you promise anyone a date.

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?

There is no Trusted Partner scheme to join any more. DETE folded it into the portal, and what it used to give you now comes as standard with every employer account.

The department is explicit about it. Under Employment Permits Online every employer submits Revenue documentation and a CRO number to establish and maintain a portal account, so "there is no longer a requirement for a separate Trusted Partner Initiative" and, in DETE's words, "there is no Trusted Partner status on the Employment Permits Online system." If you held Trusted Partner status under the old system, there is nothing to re-register for.

What replaced it does the same job automatically. Your company is verified once when you set up the account, with the permits team validating the documents you upload. After that the portal watches the expiry dates for you: it sends automatic messages when your Revenue and CRO details are coming up for renewal, and at three months left on the current verification your status changes to Pending Renewal. A Company Registration Renewal option then appears, and you upload the updated Revenue documents through it.

The bit that matters for your timeline is simple: there is no fast-track decision queue for any employer. DETE publishes one set of processing dates by permit type and works through them in date order of receipt. No employer status moves you up that list. What you can control is whether your application is clean enough to stay in the queue instead of being returned, and that includes keeping your portal verification current — Revenue and CRO details are a core account requirement, and any change to them has to be validated by the permits team before it takes effect.

One thing that trips people up: some of DETE's older permit-type pages still describe applications being queued "depending on the Employer type, that is, Trusted Partner or Standard". That wording predates the April 2025 portal and has not been cleaned up — the same pages still call the department by its old name, Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

Sources: DETE, Trusted Partner Initiative update and DETE, Launch of Employment Permits Online, checked 6 August 2026.

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. Renewals sit in their own DETE queue with their own processing date, and it is not the same as the queue for a first-time permit. A permit left to drift toward expiry puts the worker's right to keep working at risk — check the tracker and file well ahead of the expiry date.

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.

Frequently asked questions