The Reactivation Employment Permit: An Irish Employer's Guide (2026)

The Reactivation Employment Permit is one most employers have never heard of, and for good reason — it solves a narrow problem. It exists for a worker who was already in Ireland legally on a permit, then lost that status through no fault of their own, and now needs a way back to legal employment.

If that describes someone you want to employ — a worker whose previous employer let their permit lapse, or who was exploited and walked away — this is the permit that can put them back on a legal footing. If you're an employer looking to bring in a worker from overseas, it isn't your permit, and this guide will tell you what is. We'll cover both.

What the Reactivation permit actually is

The Reactivation Employment Permit lets a foreign national who once held a valid Irish employment permit return to legal work after falling out of the system through no fault of their own — or after being badly treated or exploited in a previous job.

The classic case is a worker whose original employer didn't renew their permit, or whose business folded, leaving the worker out of status despite having done nothing wrong. Another is a worker who was exploited — underpaid, overworked, or held to conditions that breached their permit — and left that employer to escape it. The State's view is that these people were let down by the system or by a bad employer, and shouldn't be punished for it. The Reactivation permit is the mechanism for putting them right.

It is, in plain terms, a regularisation route. It does not bring anyone into Ireland. The worker is already here. What the permit does is convert a person stuck in a precarious immigration position back into a legal employee with a proper permit.

Who it's for — and who it isn't

The eligibility is tightly drawn, because the permit is a remedy for a specific wrong, not a general work permit.

A worker qualifies if they previously held an employment permit and fell out of the system without fault, and if they now hold a temporary Stamp 1 and a Reactivation Employment Permit letter from the Department of Justice.

DETE lists several situations that rule a worker out. A worker is not eligible if they:

• have already had the benefit of the scheme once;
• came to Ireland as a student or visitor and never held an employment permit;
• held only a temporary permit — an Intra-Company Transfer, a Contract for Services, or an Internship permit;
• left the State at any point; or
• changed their immigration status away from Stamp 1.

That last group matters. The permit is built around a worker who has stayed in Ireland and held onto a Stamp 1 footing. Someone who left the country, or moved onto a different immigration stamp, has stepped outside what the scheme covers.

The Stamp 1 letter comes first

This is the part that catches employers out, so it's worth being precise about the order of events.

Before any Reactivation Employment Permit application can be made to DETE, the worker has to go to Immigration Service Delivery (ISD), part of the Department of Justice, and be granted a temporary Stamp 1 immigration permission along with a specific Reactivation Employment Permit support letter. That letter is the document that unlocks the permit application.

So the sequence is: the worker sorts out their immigration position with the Department of Justice first, gets the Stamp 1 and the letter, and only then does the employment permit application go to DETE. If you, as the employer, try to apply for the permit before the worker has that letter, the application has nothing to stand on. Get the immigration step confirmed before you spend time on the permit.

What you have to meet as the employer

The employer-side criteria are close to the General Employment Permit, with a couple of useful differences.

Your business has to be registered with the Revenue Commissioners and with the Companies Registration Office, and be trading in Ireland. That's the baseline for any employment permit.

The 50/50 rule applies. At the time the permit is granted, at least half of your employees have to be nationals of the EEA, the UK or Switzerland. There's one exception: if the worker would be your sole employee, the rule is waived. There is no "fewer than 30 employees" exemption, and no general small-business carve-out — people assume one exists, and it doesn't. If you already employ a team and fewer than half are EEA nationals, the application will be refused on the 50/50 ground regardless of how genuine the role is.

The big difference in your favour: no Labour Market Needs Test. You don't have to advertise the role on Jobs Ireland, EURES and a third platform before applying, the way you would for most General Employment Permits. Because the worker is already established in Ireland and the permit is a remedy, DETE skips the market-test step.

Salary, hours and occupations

The pay floor is the National Minimum Wage — €14.15 an hour as of January 2026 — rather than the higher General Employment Permit threshold. That's a meaningful difference: a role that wouldn't clear the €36,605 General Employment Permit floor can still support a Reactivation permit, provided the pay is at or above the legal minimum for the work.

Be careful with that, though. The National Minimum Wage is the floor for the permit, but some sectors have their own legally binding rates that sit above it. Construction trades are governed by Sectoral Employment Orders, and care work has its own minimum structure. The pay has to meet whichever rate the law sets for that specific job — the National Minimum Wage is the floor, not automatically the right figure.

On occupations, almost everything is open. The Reactivation permit can be used across the full range of roles, with one carve-out: it can't be used for employment in a private home, except in the limited carer situations DETE recognises. The worker also has to actually hold the qualifications, skills or experience the job needs — the same standard as any permit.

Why it isn't an overseas-hiring permit

Here's the line to be blunt about, because it's where most enquiries about this permit go wrong.

The Reactivation Employment Permit cannot be used to hire a worker from outside Ireland. It only works for a person who is already here, who previously held a permit, and who fell out of the system. If you're a Tipperary farm, a Galway hotel or a Limerick care home wanting to bring in a worker from the Philippines who has never worked in Ireland, this permit does not apply to you — there's no prior Irish permit, no Stamp 1 letter, nothing for it to reactivate.

For that situation, the route is almost always the General Employment Permit, or the Critical Skills Employment Permit if the role and salary qualify. Those are the permits built for hiring a non-EEA worker into a new Irish job. The Reactivation permit sits in a different category entirely — it fixes a broken status, it doesn't fill a vacancy from abroad.

So the filter is short. Is the worker already in Ireland, did they hold an employment permit before, and did they lose it through no fault of their own? If yes, Reactivation is worth looking at. If the person is overseas, you need a different permit, and applying for Reactivation will only waste the weeks it takes to be refused.

How the application works

For a worker who genuinely qualifies, the process runs like this.

1. Immigration first. The worker applies to Immigration Service Delivery and obtains the temporary Stamp 1 and the Reactivation Employment Permit letter from the Department of Justice. Nothing else moves until this is in hand.
2. Either party applies. The application to DETE can be made by the worker or by you as the employer, through Employment Permits Online. The permit issues to the worker, with a certified copy to you.
3. Apply in good time. The application has to be submitted at least 12 weeks before the proposed start date. Build that lead time in.
4. DETE processes it. The application goes into the processing queue and is decided in date order; a decision-maker may ask for more information. Our live processing-times tracker shows where the queue stands now.
5. Register the permission. Once the permit is granted, the worker confirms their immigration registration with ISD and holds an Irish Residence Permit (IRP). The employment permit on its own is not permission to reside — the immigration registration is what makes the stay lawful.

The fee structure is the standard DETE one. A first permit of six months or less costs €500; a first permit of up to 24 months costs €1,000. Renewals cost more: €750 for six months or less, and €1,500 for a permit of six to 36 months. If the application is refused, 90% of the fee is refunded. The cost can't be passed on to the worker — recovering the fee or related expenses from the employee is not allowed.

Duration, renewal and Stamp 4

A first Reactivation permit is granted for up to 24 months. It can be renewed for up to a further three years on top of that.

The worker has to stay with the employer named on the permit for the first 12 months before moving to a new employer, unless they're made redundant or hit genuinely unforeseen circumstances. That's a longer initial lock than some permits carry, so it's worth both sides understanding it going in.

The payoff for the worker comes at the five-year mark. Once they've been in employment-permit employment for five years or more, they can usually apply to Immigration Service Delivery for Stamp 4 permission — which lets them live and work in Ireland without needing a permit at all. For a worker who was once stuck out of status, that's a real path back to security, and it's the reason the Reactivation permit matters so much to the people who qualify for it.

What CA Recruitment does

Most of what we do is the General Employment Permit route — placing Filipino workers with Irish employers and running the application from start to finish. Monette is Filipino, based in Tipperary, and went through the Irish permit system herself, so none of this is theory to us.

Where the Reactivation permit is concerned, the most valuable thing we do is tell you honestly whether it fits. It's a narrow permit, and plenty of employers who ask about it actually need a General Employment Permit — the worker they have in mind is overseas, or never held an Irish permit, so there's nothing to reactivate. Getting that call right at the start saves a refused application and weeks of lost time.

If you do have a worker who genuinely qualifies — already in Ireland, previously permitted, fell out of the system through no fault of their own — we can guide the immigration step with the Department of Justice and prepare the DETE application so it isn't returned for corrections. And where we place a worker for you on a fresh permit, that comes with our 90-day guarantee: if the worker leaves, or is dismissed for gross misconduct, within the first 90 days, we cover our recruitment fee for the replacement. That applies to our fee only — not the DETE, visa or travel costs.

The first thing we do on a free consultation is confirm the permit. There's no sense preparing a Reactivation application for a worker who needs a General Employment Permit, or the other way round.