Which Irish Work Permits Are Quota-Limited in 2026 — and How Many Places Are Left?

Fifteen occupations are capped by quota for a General Employment Permit in 2026. Between them they hold 5,808 permits, and every one of those quotas started on 13 May 2026 under S.I. 213/2026. If the role you are hiring for is on the list, the permit is not simply available on demand — it is available until the national pool runs out, and DETE gives you no warning before that happens.

The question employers actually ask is the second one: how many places are left. Nobody outside DETE knows. What follows is why, what DETE does publish, and how to protect a hire that depends on a quota.

The 15 Quota-Limited Occupations in 2026

Quotas live in Schedule 5 of the Employment Permits Regulations 2024. Regulation 6 of S.I. 213/2026 substituted that schedule in full, so the table below is the operative list — not an addition to what came before, but a replacement for it.

Two of these are new. Fish filleter and seafood operative were created by the May 2026 Occupations Lists Review, which confirmed 32 changes to the eligible occupations in total. The other thirteen are renewals of quotas that existed before, several of which had already filled and expired.

The sector spread matters more than the individual numbers. Care and social services carry the largest single pool at 1,495, with a separate 200 for support workers. Motor and vehicle trades account for five of the fifteen entries, led by the 1,000-permit pool shared by car mechanics, motor mechanics, auto electricians and motor vehicle technicians — our guide to hiring motor mechanics from overseas covers how a garage should time an application against it. Agri-food holds horticulture at 971, butcher/boner at 548, and the two new seafood quotas. Hospitality management is split four ways into pools of 100, 200, 50 and 50 — worth reading alongside our guide to hospitality work permits in 2026, because that split is a downgrade disguised as a renewal.

How Many Places Are Left? Nobody Outside DETE Knows

There is no published counter. Employers find this the hardest part to accept, so here is exactly what does and does not exist:

• No live quota tracker. DETE publishes the maximum in the regulations and nothing about consumption.
• The statistics don't help either. DETE's 2026 employment permit statistics are broken down by nationality, by company, by county and by sector. There is no breakdown by occupation, so you cannot subtract issued permits from the cap to estimate what remains.
• The only signal is retrospective. When a pool is exhausted, DETE posts a "this quota has now been filled" notice on its latest updates page. That notice tells you the quota is gone — it does not tell you it is nearly gone.

As of 24 September 2026, no quota-filled notice has been published for any of the fifteen quotas that began on 13 May 2026.

That statement needs one qualification, and it is the qualification that trips people up. DETE's notices page carries ten separate "this quota has now been filled" notices, and none is retracted when it stops being current. Five of them name occupations that now carry a fresh quota running from 13 May 2026 under S.I. 213/2026: car mechanics (19 March 2026), the four hospitality manager titles (28 April 2026), HGV/bus mechanics (28 February 2025), vehicle paint technicians (14 February 2025) and vehicle body builders and repairers (13 January 2025). Check the date and the instrument named in any closure notice before you act on it.

Dairy, Meat and Pig — The Roles Missing from Schedule 5

Several roles held quota figures before 13 May 2026 and have no row in the Schedule 5 that S.I. 213/2026 substituted that day. Four of them matter to farm and meat employers: dairy farm assistant, meat processor operative, pig farm assistant and pig manager. All four are still eligible for a General Employment Permit. Their carve-outs from the ineligible list sit in Schedule 4, which the same instrument re-made with all four still excepted. Schedule 5 is where the Regulations set quotas, so on the face of the Regulations none of the four is capped. What differs between them is what DETE has said since.

Meat processor operative: DETE's notice and the Regulations point different ways. S.I. 643/2025 set a figure of 1,000 permits from 17 December 2025, up from 311, which had stood since 2 September 2024. The substituted Schedule 5 has no meat processor operative row. DETE's notice of 26 August 2026 still cites that 1,000 maximum, says the quota is oversubscribed and has almost been filled, and asks employers not to submit new applications for meat processor operatives at this time. We report both positions and do not decide between them. What matters in practice is that DETE decides your application, and applications left in the processing queue when a quota fills are rejected, not carried into the next tranche.

Nothing about eligibility has changed. Meat processor operative is still a named exception at SOC 8111, and still on the reduced shortage occupation threshold of €32,691 a year and €16.12 an hour, both of which must be met.

What this costs an employer is the 28-day Labour Market Needs Test. Start one now and you are advertising for four weeks against a pool DETE has said is nearly gone. Before you advertise, read DETE's employment permits notices for the position on the day — that page, not this one, is where the current answer lives. We check it with every meat processor operative client before anyone spends money on an advertisement.

Dairy farm assistant: eligible, and no statutory cap today. DETE's ineligible occupations list specifically excepts dairy farm assistant from SOC 9111, and that exception is live. S.I. 643/2025 set a figure of 850 permits from 17 December 2025, up from 406, which had stood since 2 September 2024. That figure sat inside Schedule 5, and the table was replaced on 13 May 2026 without it, so no statutory cap applies to dairy permits today. The only notice on DETE's page closing dairy applications is dated 25 November 2025; it concerns the S.I. 444/2024 figure and predates the 850. DETE has published nothing closing dairy applications since. What we cannot verify from outside is how DETE is administering dairy applications in practice, which is why we confirm the current position with DETE for your specific role before you spend anything. A standard 28-day Labour Market Needs Test applies, as with any General Employment Permit.

Pig farm assistant and pig manager: the same statutory position, and no word from DETE. S.I. 444/2024 set figures of 214 permits for pig farm assistants and 245 for pig managers, both from 2 September 2024. Neither row is in the substituted Schedule 5, so the Regulations no longer cap either role. DETE has published no notice about either role in either direction. Both are named exceptions on the ineligible list, at the standard €36,605 threshold. As with dairy, we confirm the position with DETE before a pig client advertises. See our guides to hiring farm workers from overseas and hiring pig farm workers, or the agriculture sector page.

Roles Employers Wrongly Think Are Capped

Being uncapped is better news than being early in a quota, and several roles Irish employers assume are quota-limited are not.

HGV drivers. The quota table contains HGV/bus mechanics, not drivers. Drivers holding a category CE or C1E licence are eligible and uncapped. A category C or rigid-only licence does not qualify at all, quota or no quota — the detail is in our HGV driver hiring guide.

Chefs and nurses. Executive, head and sous chefs with five years' experience, and chefs de partie and commis chefs with two, are eligible outside fast-food outlets, with no cap. Registered nurses sit on the Critical Skills list, and no Critical Skills occupation carries a quota. Care workers and home carers are the exception in healthcare — eligible, but inside the 1,495 pool, at a minimum of €16.12 per hour and €32,691 a year. See the healthcare and care and social services pages, or our guide to the healthcare assistant shortage.

Construction trades. Carpenters, plasterers, bricklayers, welders, steel fixers and scaffolders are eligible and uncapped. Their real constraint is pay, not quota: Sectoral Employment Order rates put a construction craftsperson at about €48,150 a year since 1 August 2026, well over the standard permit floor of €36,605. Our construction hiring guide and the construction sector page cover it.

Two Traps in Reading a Quota

Both of these have caught competent people this year, including advisers who read the right page and drew the wrong conclusion.

A "quota filled" notice can be superseded. DETE's latest updates page is chronological, and a notice stays up long after the quota it describes has been replaced. The March and April 2026 closure notices described above are still on the page today, unretracted, although both roles have carried fresh quotas since 13 May 2026. Read the whole page top-down, and check the newest Occupations Lists Review before repeating any closure.

A quota you believe is live can be silently deleted. This is the mirror image, and it is nastier. When a statutory instrument substitutes a schedule rather than amending it, everything absent from the replacement is gone — no announcement, no correction to the original press release. S.I. 213/2026 did exactly that on 13 May 2026: it replaced Schedule 5 outright, and the fifteen occupations in the table above are the whole of it. A quota announced before that date and not among those fifteen has no footing in the Regulations any more, while the press release that announced it stays online reading as current. Checking whether a quota has been closed is not enough; you have to confirm the occupation still appears in the operative schedule.

Then check DETE's notices as well, because the schedule is not the only thing that decides an application. Meat processor operative has no row in the substituted Schedule 5, yet DETE's notice of 26 August 2026 still applies the 1,000-permit figure from S.I. 643/2025, as the section above sets out.

The practical rule: verify against the current Schedule 5 as substituted by the most recent instrument and against DETE's latest notices, never against the announcement that introduced the quota.

The Timing Problem: 28 Days of Exposure

Quotas interact badly with the Labour Market Needs Test. A General Employment Permit application generally requires the vacancy to be advertised for 28 days before you can submit, so the clock starts when you advertise — not when you decide to hire.

That leaves a minimum four-week window in which the pool can fill without you knowing. If it does, DETE's own wording is unambiguous: applications submitted and awaiting processing are rejected. They are not queued for the next tranche.

The May 2026 review made this concrete. Nine roles needed a fresh Labour Market Needs Test — the two new seafood quotas, the four hospitality manager roles, and car mechanics, vehicle body builders and vehicle paint technicians, whose quotas had previously expired. Where the test started on 13 May, the earliest valid application date was 10 June. Every employer in those nine roles was advertising into the same pool at the same time, and the first application could not land for four weeks.

Nothing about the process gets faster because a quota is tight. In our experience a General Employment Permit hire runs roughly six months start to finish once you count the test, the DETE queue, the visa and travel — the detail is in our costs and timelines guide.

What to Do Before You Advertise

For a capped role, the sequence that protects you is short:

1. Confirm the occupation is actually on the quota list — and confirm the classification. Neighbouring job titles land on opposite sides of the table: HGV mechanic is capped at 442, HGV driver is not on the table at all, and butcher/boner sits at 548. Get the occupation title wrong and none of the rest of this applies. A quota only caps a role that is already eligible, so check first that yours is not one of the roles that cannot get a permit at all.
2. Check the current position against the operative schedule, not against a press release or a blog post — including ours. Both can date.
3. Check for a filled notice, then check whether it has been superseded by a later instrument.
4. Confirm the salary clears the minimum for that occupation before the advertisement goes out. A test advertised below the threshold invalidates the application regardless of quota status.
5. Advertise promptly once you commit. In a small pool, four weeks of exposure is the risk you are managing, and it does not shrink.

If the pool for your role is one of the small ones — 50 for fish filleters, publicans or catering and bar managers, 100 for hotel managers, seafood operatives or vehicle paint technicians — treat a delayed start as a real risk to the hire, not an administrative inconvenience.

Frequently asked questions