Hiring on a General Employment Permit: What Irish Employers Actually Need (2026)

What the General Employment Permit Actually Lets You Do

The General Employment Permit is the route most Irish employers use to hire a worker from outside the EEA for a role they can't fill locally. It is the flagship permit — the one that covers general roles in agriculture, construction, care, hospitality and food production, rather than the narrow list of high-skill occupations the Critical Skills permit is built for.

The state's starting position is generous: every occupation is assumed eligible for the General Employment Permit unless it appears on the Ineligible List. That is the opposite of the Critical Skills route, where only named occupations qualify. So for most of the roles employers struggle to fill, the General Employment Permit is the answer.

What follows is not another explainer of the rules. It's what you, as the employer signing the application, actually have to be, do and pay to make a hire happen. Work through it as a checklist.

Can You Sponsor? The Employer Test

Before the role or the worker matters, DETE looks at you. You have to be a genuine, legal Irish employer, and you have to clear the 50:50 rule. Three checks:

• You're a registered, trading employer. You must be registered with the Revenue Commissioners and, where it applies, with the Companies Registration Office, and actually trading in the State. The worker has to be employed, salaried and paid directly by you — not through a third party.
• At least half your workforce is EEA. DETE will not issue the permit unless, on the day you apply, at least 50% of your employees are EEA nationals. This is the 50:50 rule, and it's counted across your whole headcount, not the one role you're filling. Our guide to the 50:50 rule walks through how it's measured.
• You fit an exemption, or you don't need one. The 50:50 rule is waived in narrow cases — a start-up registered as an employer within the last two years with an Enterprise Ireland or IDA letter of support, or where the new hire will genuinely be your only employee. Most employers don't need an exemption; they simply meet the ratio. But if you're a small operation hiring your second or third worker, check the maths before you commit.

If you fail the 50:50 rule on application day, nothing else you do matters. It's the first thing worth confirming.

Is Your Role Eligible?

Because the General Employment Permit assumes every occupation is eligible unless excluded, the question isn't "is my role on the list?" — it's "is my role on the Ineligible List?" If it isn't excluded, you can proceed.

The Ineligible List covers occupations the state has decided not to grant general permits for — a range of clerical, retail, general operative and lower-paid service roles. A permit cannot be issued for a job on that list regardless of what you offer to pay. So the first eligibility step is to check the exact job title and duties against the current Ineligible List of Occupations.

The second is salary, and that's where most of the real decisions sit.

What You Must Pay — the Salary Floor by Role

This is the part employers most often get wrong, and it's the part most likely to sink an otherwise-good application. There is no single number. The floor depends on the role.

Here is where the floors sit in 2026, straight from the Department's current criteria:

• General roles — €36,605 a year. This is the default minimum annual remuneration for most General Employment Permit roles.
• Care and selected sectors — €32,691 a year, set hourly at €16.12. Health Care Assistants, home support workers, horticulture workers and meat processor operatives have a lower floor. The key point for employers: this is a minimum hourly rate of €16.12. The €32,691 annual figure only holds at a 39-hour week. Roster fewer hours and the annual pay drops, but the €16.12 hourly minimum still has to be met. Get the hours and the rate to line up before you advertise.
• Recent Irish graduate — €34,009 a year. Where the worker holds a relevant degree from an Irish third-level college earned in the previous 12 months, the floor is €34,009.
• Construction trades — Sectoral Employment Order rates, around €46,600 a year. This is the one that catches employers out. Construction craftspeople are not on the general €36,605 floor. They're governed by the Sectoral Employment Order for the construction sector, where a craftsperson minimum runs to roughly €46,600 a year — well above the general threshold. Advertise a bricklayer or electrician at €36,605 and the application is built on the wrong number from the start.

One more threshold worth knowing because it changes the process, not just the pay: a role offering €68,911 or more is exempt from the Labour Market Needs Test entirely. For a senior hire, paying at that level removes a month of advertising from your timeline.

Remember what counts as remuneration. The floor is met by basic salary — at least the National Minimum Wage or any statutory rate that applies — plus, where you provide it, health insurance with a registered Irish insurer. Accommodation, tips and bonuses don't count toward the threshold.

The Checklist: What You Actually Provide

For a standard General Employment Permit application, you're the one supplying most of the file. In practice that means:

1. A genuine job offer and contract describing the role, duties, hours, location and pay that meets the correct floor above.
2. Proof you're a bona fide employer — Revenue registration, and CRO registration where it applies.
3. A completed Labour Market Needs Test for most roles — the 28-day advertising step proving no EEA worker was available. More on this below.
4. Confirmation you meet the 50:50 rule, or evidence of a valid exemption.
5. The worker's details and qualifications — passport, and any qualifications, skills or experience the role requires.
6. The application and fee, submitted on Employment Permits Online at least 12 weeks before the intended start date.

Miss or mis-state any one of these and the file either gets a request for more information — which adds weeks — or a refusal.

The Steps You Actually Run — and the Real Timeline

Here's the sequence, in the order it happens, with honest timing. This is where the "it only takes a few weeks" myth does the most damage.

1. Check eligibility and the 50:50 rule. Day one. Confirm the role isn't excluded, set the correct salary, confirm your workforce ratio.
2. Run the Labour Market Needs Test. For most roles you advertise the vacancy with the Department of Social Protection / EURES network and on one additional online platform, both for a minimum of 28 continuous days. You can't submit the permit until that's complete. Our full LMNT guide covers the exact rules, because a single mistake resets the clock.
3. Submit the application. Once the 28 days are done, you apply on Employment Permits Online — and the rule is that the application must be received at least 12 weeks before the proposed start date.
4. Wait out DETE processing. Applications are processed strictly in date order by employer type. Processing for General Employment Permits currently runs at around 13 weeks. The processor may ask for more information, which you have 28 days to return.
5. Visa, travel and relocation. Once the permit issues, a worker from a visa-required country applies for an employment (D) visa, then needs time to travel, register with immigration and settle in.

What It Costs

The processing fee for a new General Employment Permit is €1,000 for a permit of 6 to 24 months, or €500 for one of 6 months or less. If the application is unsuccessful, 90% of the fee is refunded.

Two cost rules that matter for employers:

• You can't pass the fee to the worker. Under section 55 of the Employment Permits Act 2024, the employer can't deduct the application fee from the worker's pay or recover it from them in any way. It's your cost to carry.
• The fee is the smallest line. The real costs are the salary at the correct floor, the advertising for the Labour Market Needs Test, and — if you use an agency — the recruitment and management fee. Budget for the role, not just the permit.

Where Employers Get It Wrong

Almost every refused or delayed General Employment Permit we see traces back to one of these:

• Wrong salary for the role. A construction trade advertised at the general €36,605 instead of the Sectoral Employment Order rate, or a care role rostered at hours that drop annual pay below what was advertised. The number has to be right before the advert goes live.
• The 50:50 rule missed. A small employer applies without checking the workforce ratio and is refused on a rule that has nothing to do with the candidate.
• A botched Labour Market Needs Test. The advert expires early, gets edited mid-run, or goes on the wrong platforms — and the whole 28 days has to start again.
• Underestimating the timeline. A start date promised to the worker, or a roster gap planned around "a few weeks," when the real journey is six months. The permit step alone is around 13 weeks of processing.
• Applying too late. The application has to be in at least 12 weeks before the start date. Leave it to the last minute and the date isn't workable.

How CA Recruitment Does It for You

The General Employment Permit is exactly the kind of process where the rules are specific, the numbers change by role, and one wrong figure costs a month. So we run the whole thing for our clients as managed recruitment.

In practice that means we source the worker — most of our placements are skilled Filipino workers — check the role against the Ineligible List, set the correct salary floor for the sector, confirm your 50:50 position, run the Labour Market Needs Test to the letter, prepare and submit the application, and manage the visa and the move. You don't handle the paperwork.

Monette, who runs CA Recruitment, is a Filipino national living in Ireland and has been through this permit system herself. That's the difference between a guide and a service: we've placed workers with Irish employers under these exact rules, so we know where the file gets stuck and how to keep it moving.

We also back placements with a 90-day guarantee. If the worker leaves, or has to be dismissed for gross misconduct, within the first 90 days, we cover our recruitment fee for a replacement. (The guarantee applies to our fee only — it doesn't cover the DETE, visa or travel costs, which are paid to third parties.)

If you're planning a hire on a General Employment Permit and want it handled properly from the start, book a free consultation or message us on WhatsApp. Tell us the role, and we'll tell you whether it's eligible, what you'd have to pay, and what the timeline looks like for your situation. Not sure the General Employment Permit is even the right route? Our GEP vs CSEP comparison shows which permit fits which role.

Frequently Asked Questions