Can Irish Employers Hire Nurses From Overseas? NMBI, Permits and the Process

The Short Answer

Yes, Irish employers can hire registered nurses from overseas. Nursing homes, private hospitals, and care groups do it regularly to fill posts that simply will not fill locally.

But hiring a nurse is not the same as hiring a care assistant, and the difference catches employers out. A nurse needs two separate approvals before they can start:

1. Registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland (NMBI). A nurse cannot legally practise in Ireland until they are on the NMBI register. No exceptions.
2. An employment permit sponsored by you as the employer — usually a Critical Skills Employment Permit, sometimes a General Employment Permit.

The permit process is the same one that governs every overseas hire. The NMBI step is the extra layer, and it is the part that adds the most time. Get the order and the expectations right at the start and the process is predictable. Get them wrong and you can lose months.

NMBI Registration — The Key Difference

This is the single biggest thing that separates hiring a nurse from hiring a healthcare assistant. A care assistant does not need professional registration to start work. A nurse does, and there is no way around it.

A nurse trained outside the EU goes through two stages with NMBI: recognition of their qualifications, then registration on the live register. The application is made by the nurse through NMBI's online portal, MyNMBI. They upload their own documentation — qualifications, identity, references and the rest.

NMBI assesses the application against Irish standards and places the applicant in one of its classification groups. The assessment has a few possible outcomes. In many cases NMBI decides the nurse's training does not fully match the Irish standard and asks for compensation measures before registration. In NMBI's own words, that means an adaptation period and/or an aptitude test.

An adaptation period is a supervised placement in an Irish healthcare setting. That has a direct consequence for you as an employer: the nurse may need a clinical placement to complete registration, and that placement takes time and supervision to arrange.

There is also an English language requirement that the nurse must meet, evidenced by an approved language test to NMBI's required standard.

Filipino-trained nurses are one of the largest groups going through this route, and the pathway is well established. It is not quick, but it is well worn.

Which Permit: Critical Skills or General

Registered nurses sit on the Critical Skills Occupations List. That is good news for employers, because the Critical Skills Employment Permit (CSEP) is the faster and more attractive route. But which permit applies comes down to the salary you are offering.

The Critical Skills Employment Permit (CSEP)

The CSEP is built for in-demand roles, and nursing is one of them. DETE accepts a nurse where they hold a third-level degree or diploma that NMBI accepts as a sufficient qualification to register and practise in the State.

The salary threshold for a nurse is €40,904 minimum annual remuneration. One figure, and it applies whether your candidate qualified last year or twenty years ago.

The CSEP carries real advantages over the General Employment Permit. It skips the Labour Market Needs Test (the 28-day advertising requirement). It puts the nurse on a faster route to long-term residence — Critical Skills holders become eligible to apply for a Stamp 4 support letter at around the two-year point. And it allows immediate family reunification rather than the wait that applies to General Employment Permit holders.

The General Employment Permit (GEP)

If the salary on offer falls below the CSEP threshold, the General Employment Permit becomes the route. The GEP minimum is €36,605 per year. It requires the Labour Market Needs Test, and it does not carry the same family reunification and residence advantages as the CSEP.

The point to take from this: do not assume a reduced or "lower-paid" threshold applies to a nurse the way it can for some other roles. A registered nurse is a qualified professional, and the threshold is the standard CSEP or GEP figure. We confirm the correct route for your exact salary and role before you commit to anything.

The Full Process, Step by Step

Here is what hiring a nurse from overseas actually looks like, in order:

1. Confirm eligibility. We check the 50:50 rule (at least 50% of your workforce must be EEA, Swiss or UK citizens on the date you apply — this applies to both permit types), confirm the role and the salary, and decide whether it is a CSEP or GEP route.

2. Identify the nurse. A qualified candidate with the right experience for your service, who is prepared to go through NMBI registration and relocate.

3. Start NMBI registration. The nurse applies through MyNMBI for recognition of qualifications. This is the long pole in the process, so it starts early. If NMBI requires an adaptation period or aptitude test, that is arranged here.

4. English language evidence. The nurse provides an approved English language test result to NMBI's required standard, if not already held.

5. Atypical Working Scheme permission, entry visa and travel. Where the nurse needs clinical adaptation or the RCSI aptitude test, they apply to the Department of Justice under the Atypical Working Scheme — from outside Ireland, with NMBI's acceptance letter and a signed two-year contract. ISD asks for a minimum of 20 working days and a €250 fee. Only once that approval issues can a visa-required nurse apply for the entry visa, and ISD says to allow at least 8 weeks for it. Travel cannot be booked until both the approval and the visa are in hand.

6. Complete NMBI registration. Any adaptation placement or RCSI aptitude test finishes here and NMBI issues the PIN. The employer cannot apply for the permit before this point.

7. Submit the employment permit application. For a CSEP — the usual route, since Registered Nurses are on the Critical Skills Occupations List — the application goes straight in. For a GEP, the Labour Market Needs Test runs first (28 days of advertising). The DETE permit fee applies.

8. Immigration registration. The nurse is already in the State by this point — under the Atypical Working Scheme the entry visa is applied for after Scheme approval and before travel, not after the permit. Once the permit issues, they register with Immigration Service Delivery (ISD) for an Irish Residence Permit (IRP).

9. Start date. The nurse can only practise once NMBI registration is complete and the permit and immigration steps are done.

The sequencing matters, and it is the opposite of what most employers assume. NMBI registration comes first. DETE is explicit that non-EEA nurses accepted on clinical adaptation placements "are no longer eligible to apply for employment permits", and that those who complete adaptation and receive their NMBI certificate "will be eligible to apply". Immigration Service Delivery puts the same point the other way round: once the nurse receives the PIN from NMBI, the employer can apply for the permit. What can genuinely run in parallel is the employer-side work — the 50:50 check, the two-year contract, sourcing and vetting — not the permit application itself.

How Long It Really Takes

Plan for eight months from the day you start to the day the nurse can work, and treat that as a floor rather than an estimate. The reason is sequencing: for a nurse the stages run one after another, not together, and each one has a published duration you can check.

The employment permit is only one part of it. The DETE decision queue moves through the year — our employment permit processing times tracker carries the current wait for each permit type. The Critical Skills route has consistently run ahead of the standard queue. But the permit clock is not the whole clock.

NMBI registration comes first, and for a nurse it is usually the part that decides the overall timeline. If NMBI requires an adaptation period, the nurse needs a supervised clinical placement before registration finalises, and that can add months. On top of the permit and NMBI, the visa and travel add several more weeks.

So eight months is the realistic floor, not a pessimistic one, and the order matters as much as the total. NMBI recognition of qualifications comes first and takes several months. The Atypical Working Scheme application then needs a minimum of 20 working days, and ISD tells applicants to allow at least 8 weeks on top for the entry visa — which cannot be applied for before the Scheme approval issues, and which must be in hand before the nurse books travel. Only after arrival does the clinical adaptation placement run, 6 to 12 weeks in an NMBI-approved Irish facility. NMBI issues the PIN, and only at that point can the employer apply for the permit, inside the single six-month permission the Scheme grants from the date of entry. Anyone quoting you "a few weeks" is talking about the permit in isolation and ignoring the NMBI step that makes a nurse a nurse. Anyone quoting six months is assuming NMBI and the permit run alongside each other — they do not, and that is the single most common mistake made about nurse timelines.

What Employers Get Wrong

The same handful of mistakes account for most of the delays and false starts we see when employers try to hire a nurse on their own.

Treating it like a care-assistant hire. A healthcare assistant does not need professional registration. A nurse does. Employers who have hired care staff before sometimes assume the nurse process is the same and only discover NMBI when the candidate cannot legally start.

Underestimating NMBI. The registration step is not a formality. Compensation measures — an adaptation period or aptitude test — are common, not rare, and they take time. Build the timeline around NMBI, not around the permit.

Booking the move too early. NMBI's own advice is to wait for a registration decision before making travel or employment plans. Employers who set a start date before registration is confirmed end up rescheduling.

Assuming the wrong salary threshold. A nurse is a qualified professional. The threshold is the standard CSEP figure of €40,904, or the €36,605 GEP minimum — not a reduced rate, and not the €36,848 recent-graduate band, which is written for other occupations and does not apply to a nurse however recently they qualified. Offer below the threshold for your chosen route and the permit is refused.

Forgetting the 50:50 rule. It applies to the Critical Skills permit just as it does to the General permit. The CSEP skips the Labour Market Needs Test, but not the 50:50 ratio. If less than half your workforce is EEA on the day you apply, the application is refused regardless of how good the candidate is.

How CA Recruitment Helps

CA Recruitment is led by Monette, who came to Ireland from the Philippines and has been through the immigration and permit system herself. We place Filipino workers with Irish employers and manage the full employment permit process so you do not have to.

For a nurse hire specifically, that means we tell you up front which permit applies to your salary and role, we explain exactly what the NMBI step will involve for your candidate, and we coordinate the permit, visa and immigration steps end to end. We are not the registration body — NMBI assesses and registers the nurse, and that timeline sits with them — but we make sure the permit and the move are sequenced correctly around the NMBI decision so nothing is wasted.

We want to be straight with you: nurse placements involve the NMBI layer that no agency can shortcut. What we can do is run the parts we control properly, set realistic expectations, and stop you losing months to avoidable mistakes.

Every placement we manage is backed by our 90-day guarantee, which covers you if the worker leaves or is dismissed for gross misconduct within the first 90 days. The guarantee applies to our recruitment fee. It does not cover DETE permit, visa, or travel costs, which are paid to third parties. Full terms are on our guarantee terms page.

Frequently Asked Questions