Employment Permit Refused in Ireland? The Employer's Guide to the 28-Day Review (and Keeping Your Candidate)

The Short Answer

If DETE has refused your employment permit application, you have 28 calendar days from the date on the refusal letter to ask for a review. You file it, not the candidate, because you made the application. A more senior official who did not make the first decision looks at it again.

Before you file anything, read the refusal reason. DETE lists reasons that cannot be fixed at review stage, and for those a corrected new application is the route. Right now the review queue runs months behind the queue for new applications, so picking the wrong route can cost you the candidate as well as the time.

Why the Refusal Is Yours to Deal With

For a General Employment Permit, either the employer or the worker can apply. When you apply as the employer, which is how we run every placement, you are the applicant. The refusal comes to you. The right to a review belongs to you. The 90% refund is paid to you. Section 35 of the Employment Permits Act 2024 gives the review right to "the applicant", and DETE's policy is to pay refunds to applicants only.

Your candidate may have spent months waiting, and they cannot fix this. It is in your hands.

What the Refusal Letter Has to Tell You

DETE cannot just say no. Under section 34 of the Act, a refusal must be in writing and must give you three things:

• the decision
• the reasons for it
• the fact that you can submit the decision for review, and the time limit for doing so

The letter also comes with a refund request form. Keep it. You will need it whichever way you go.

Read the reasons slowly. They are specific and tied to the rules, and they decide what you do next. A refusal for an advert that ran on the wrong dates and a refusal for a figure the processor misread look similar on the page. They lead to very different decisions.

How the 28-Day Review Works

The review is carried out inside the Department, by an officer of the Minister, rather than by an outside body. The legal basis is section 35 of the Employment Permits Act 2024, and the mechanics are in Regulation 21 of the Employment Permits Regulations 2024.

The reviewer is an officer appointed for the purpose, who did not make the original decision and is of a more senior grade. You have 28 days from the date the decision was notified to you, which DETE counts as 28 calendar days from the date on the refusal letter. You file the request through the Employment Permits Online portal, with your supporting documents attached.

The reviewer then does one of two things: confirms the refusal and tells you why in writing, or cancels it and grants the permit.

Attach the documents that support your case, as Regulation 21 allows. You are showing that the decision was wrong on what DETE already had. You are not getting a second go at a better application.

What a review really costs you is time, which we come to below.

Review or Reapply: Sorting the Refusal Reason

DETE is unusually direct about this. Its employment permits FAQ lists the most common refusal reasons that cannot be rectified at review stage. It also says the Minister has no discretion over the salary thresholds, the occupation lists or the advertising requirement, because those are set in regulations.

On the 50:50 rule, the ratio at the date you applied is what counts, so a review cannot rescue it. If that was your refusal reason, our 50:50 rule guide covers how to get the ratio right before you reapply.

Some refusals are the employer's own paperwork. An advert taken down a day early. A contract that shows a different salary from the application. A job title that does not match the duties. We would rather say that plainly, because it changes the decision. If the mistake was on your side, a review is unlikely to undo it. If the mistake was on DETE's side, a review is exactly the right tool.

What the Refusal Costs You

The fee for a new General Employment Permit of 6 months up to 24 months is €1,000. If the application is refused, 90% is refunded, so €900 comes back.

To get it, return the refund request form that came with the refusal letter:

• Received within 170 days of your original payment: refunded to the card you paid with, in about 5 working days.
• Received more than 170 days after payment: you also need a mandate form, and it is paid by bank transfer within 4 to 6 weeks.

The catch is that you cannot run a review and collect the refund at the same time. DETE's guidance is that if you have asked for a review and then want the refund instead, you send back the refund form with a statement withdrawing the review.

So the two routes cost different amounts up front:

• Reapply: claim €900 back, pay €1,000 on the new application. The refusal itself has cost you €100 in fees, plus whatever the new advert costs.
• Review: no new fee, but you cannot claim the €900 refund while the review is running.

In most businesses the empty role costs far more than the fee. Our cost guide sets out the full cost of an overseas hire if you want the bigger picture.

One thing you must not do is pass any of this to the worker. Where the employer is the applicant, section 55 of the Act bars you, or any agent acting for you, from deducting from their pay or seeking to recover from them any charge, fee or expense related to the application. If you used an agency, what happens to its fee after a refusal is a contract question. Our guide to agency terms of business covers that clause.

The Timeline Hit

For most employers, the queues decide it. DETE processes everything in date order, and it publishes the date it has reached in each queue. As of 13 October 2026, it was processing:

• new General Employment Permit applications received on 8 September 2026
• reviews received on 28 April 2026

So the new-application queue had reached applications about five weeks old, while the review queue was still working through ones more than five months old. Our processing times tracker follows these dates. The gap between the two queues is the number that matters.

Two rules mean you have to pick one route:

• One live application per worker. DETE will not accept a new application for the same person while a review is pending. To reapply, you withdraw the review first.
• The advert has a shelf life. Labour Market Needs Test adverts must run for at least 28 days, in the 90 days before you apply. If your original adverts are older than that, a new application needs new adverts, which must run for at least 28 days before you can submit.

So do the sum on the day you decide: 28 days of fresh adverts plus the new-application wait, against the review wait.

So a refusal delays the hire rather than ending it, by however long the route you choose takes.

Keeping the Candidate While You Fix It

Your candidate has probably been waiting since the advert went up. They may have turned down other offers. If they are a good worker, other employers and agencies are talking to them. A refusal is the moment they start listening.

What works:

• Tell them the same week. Do not let them hear it from someone else or work it out from the silence. Tell them what was refused, why, and what you are doing about it.
• Give them a plan with a date. "We are reapplying, the new advert closes in four weeks, and the application goes in the day after" holds someone. "We're looking into it" does not.
• Tell them it is not about them, if it is not. If the refusal reason is your advert, your ratio or your paperwork, say so.
• Do not ask them to pay for anything. It is illegal under section 55, as above, and it is the fastest way to lose them.
• Keep in regular contact. A short message every week or two, even with no news, beats a long silence followed by good news.
• Do not let them resign from their current job early. No new date is certain until the permit is granted.

If the candidate does walk away, you have not lost the refund. The €900 still comes back on the refusal.

When to Change the Role, the Salary or the Plan

Sometimes the honest answer is that neither a review nor a straight reapplication will work.

• The job is on the Ineligible List, or its quota has filled. A review cannot change the list. The only legitimate fix is a role whose real duties fall in an eligible occupation. Never re-label a job to get through. Describe the job as it actually is.
• The salary was below the threshold. The Minister has no discretion here. Raise the pay to at least the threshold for that occupation and reapply with a fresh advert at the new rate.
• The 50:50 ratio failed. Fix the ratio first. Reapplying before it is right just buys a second refusal.
• The worker's immigration status was the problem. That is fixed on the date you applied. A different candidate may be the cleaner route, which is a hard conversation but sometimes the right one.

If the same application has been refused once, reviewed and refused again, DETE says you can still submit a new application. Do it only once you know exactly what changes this time.

How CA Recruitment Helps

We manage the permit application for every worker we place. That includes the advert timing, the 50:50 check, the salary against the threshold and the contract, before anything is submitted. When a refusal does land, we read the letter with you and tell you plainly whether it is a review case or a reapply case. Then we keep the candidate informed while it gets fixed, because that part is easy to forget when you are dealing with the Department.

If you have a refusal letter on your desk now, send it to us or message Monette on WhatsApp. The 28 days are already running.

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