Somewhere in your inbox is a PDF called "Terms of Business". It arrived attached to a friendly email, it is eleven pages long, and it is the only document in the whole hiring process that decides what happens when something goes wrong.
Almost nobody reads it. That is not carelessness — it is written to be skimmed, and by the time most employers look at it properly there is already a candidate in play. This is a reading guide, written by an agency that will hand you its own.
Correct as of 19 August 2026. Government permit fees, refund rules and processing times change during the year, and every agency sets its own commercial terms. Get in touch and we will go through the specific clauses that apply to your role and our current terms in full, before you spend anything.
The short answer
Seven clauses decide almost everything. Find these before you read anything else:
- Acceptance — how you become bound. Frequently by conduct, not signature.
- The fee trigger — what event makes the invoice payable, and when.
- The rebate scale — how much comes back, week by week, if the hire leaves.
- The rebate conditions — the notice period and carve-outs that void it.
- The introduction window — how long a candidate counts as theirs.
- Third-party introduction — what happens if you pass the CV on.
- Permit and right-to-work responsibility — who carries it, and who does not.
The last one is the one that matters most on an overseas hire and the one most agency terms are silent on, because they were written for candidates who already have the right to work in Ireland.
You may have accepted it already
The first assumption to drop is that you are bound when you sign. Read the acceptance clause and you will usually find you are bound well before that.
So the practical rule is simple. Read the terms before you accept the first CV, not before you sign. An interview invitation can be the acceptance. So can forwarding a CV to a colleague in another company.
Two follow-ups worth asking in the same email:
- Does a variation have to be agreed in writing, and by whom? Get any promise a consultant makes confirmed in writing by the person the terms say can agree changes.
- Do these terms override your own purchase conditions? Most say yes, explicitly.
Rebate scale vs replacement: not the same promise
This is where the marketing language and the legal language part company. "We guarantee our placements" can mean two completely different things.
A rebate returns money. Ask for the schedule and check how much comes back each week and when it stops.
A replacement returns a worker. Check whether the agency will look for a replacement at no extra cost, and whether you get any money back if it cannot find one.
Neither is better in the abstract. But on a permit hire the calculation is different from a domestic one, because the agency fee is not the largest thing you lose. You will also have paid the DETE application fee, possibly Labour Market Needs Test advertising, and the visa and travel costs — none of which any rebate scale touches. If the choice is between getting 40% of the agency fee back in week eight, or getting a worker, the worker is usually worth more.
Then read the conditions, which is where rebates are actually won and lost. Check how quickly you must tell the agency in writing after a hire leaves, whether redundancy is excluded, and whether the refund is clawed back if you take the same person on again later.
Seven days is short. Put it in the offer file on day one, because nobody remembers a rebate clause in the week they are dealing with a resignation.
Who owns the candidate
Two clauses decide this, and they are easy to miss because they read like housekeeping.
The introduction window. Check how long after an introduction the fee still applies, and how "introduction" is defined.
The third-party introduction clause. This one catches decent employers doing a decent thing. Check what happens if you pass a candidate's details to another business and that business hires them.
If you run more than one entity, or you are part of a group, a franchise, or a farm partnership that shares labour, settle this before the first CV lands. Ask for the definition of Client to be widened to include your associated companies, or accept that sending a CV down the road is a chargeable act.
The same applies in reverse. If a worker approached you directly before the agency put them forward, write that down at the outset and get it acknowledged in writing. Nobody wins that argument retrospectively.
When the fee falls due
Read the trigger and the payment terms as one clause, because together they tell you when the money leaves your account relative to when the worker actually starts.
Check when the invoice is raised and when it is due. An invoice on the start date is the employer-friendly version. What you are checking for is anything that moves the trigger earlier — an invoice on offer acceptance, or a retainer that is not credited against the final fee.
Also look for a cancellation fee. Check whether you are charged for withdrawing an offer before the candidate has accepted it. On an overseas hire that scenario is more likely than on a domestic one, because months can pass between an offer and a start date and business conditions move.
We have deliberately not repeated the fee breakdown here — what an overseas hire actually costs covers the full cost picture, what should be inside a recruitment fee, and the legal limits on what an agency can charge. This page is about the agreement, not the invoice.
The clause about permit refusal — and why yours probably has none
Here is the gap. A domestic placement has one point of failure: the worker doesn't start, or doesn't stay. A permit-based hire has several, and they happen at different stages, to different bodies, with different amounts of your money already spent.
Neither of the two Irish-market terms of business quoted throughout this article mentions employment permits anywhere. That is not a criticism — they are documents for the domestic market, doing their job. It only becomes your problem when you use one for an overseas hire and assume the risk has been allocated somewhere. It has not.
What the state actually does. DETE's own guidance is clear: where an application is unsuccessful, 90% of the fee is refunded, and refunds issue to the applicant. The General Employment Permit fee is €500 for a permit of six months or less and €1,000 for six to twenty-four months, so on a standard application roughly €900 comes back and €100 does not. That is the only automatic refund in the process. Labour Market Needs Test advertising you have already paid for is not recoverable.
What the terms decide. Everything else. Ask for these four scenarios in writing, before you commit:
- DETE refuses the permit. What happens to the agency's fee, and to any part of it already invoiced?
- The permit is granted but the visa is refused. The permit fee is not refundable once the permit has issued. Who carries the rest?
- The worker withdraws before travel. Is that a rebate event, a cancellation fee, or neither?
- The application has to be resubmitted after a refusal on a fixable ground. Is that included, or a new fee?
Who the terms say is responsible. This is the part worth reading twice. Check whether the terms make you responsible for the candidate's right to work and their permit, and whether the liability clause then leaves the agency with no responsibility if the permit goes wrong.
Read together, that is an agreement under which you pay the fee and you carry the permit risk. For a domestic hire that is unremarkable — right-to-work checking is the employer's legal duty in Ireland and always will be. For a permit hire it means the specialist work you thought you were buying is expressly not being sold to you.
You are still the applicant to DETE either way; the permit is applied for by the employer, and that never transfers to an agency. The question is who does the work, who fixes it when DETE comes back with a query, and who absorbs the cost if it fails.
Governing law, liability, and the small print that dates a document
Two quick checks that take a minute each and tell you a surprising amount.
Governing law. Check which country's courts you would be in. That is entirely lawful and plenty of good agencies operate cross-border. It is simply something an Irish employer should know before a dispute, not during one.
The dates inside the document. Terms of business are rarely rewritten. Look at which laws it cites. An out-of-date reference is not itself a red flag, but it tells you roughly when the document last had a lawyer's attention, and whether anyone has revisited it since Ireland's employment permit law was consolidated in 2024.
The liability clause. Expect it to be broad — most are. What you are looking for is whether anything at all is carved back in: a warranty on the vetting they say they did, or a commitment on the permit work. If the entire clause is exclusion and no undertaking, the marketing promises on the website are not in your contract.
The two-minute licence check
Before any of the commercial terms matter, check the agency is entitled to trade at all.
Under the Employment Agency Act 1971, an employment agency must hold a licence to carry on business in Ireland. The Workplace Relations Commission publishes the Current Employment Agency List as a PDF on its Employment Agencies page. Download it, search for the name, and check the licence number matches what you have been told.
Three things worth knowing while you are there:
- The licence is annual. It runs for one year and is renewed at a fee of €500, so it is a point-in-time fact. A licence number on a website is not proof of a current licence — the list is.
- Getting one is not a formality. An applicant must be, in the Minister's opinion, a person of good character and repute. That is verified by two independent references and a Garda vetting disclosure.
- A Statement of Fees is part of the application. The WRC requires applicants to submit one "stating that you will never charge a candidate a fee." Combined with section 7(2) of the 1971 Act, which prohibits charging any fee solely for agreeing to seek employment for another person, that settles who pays: you do.
For a permit hire the protection is stronger again. Section 55 of the Employment Permits Act 2024 prohibits an employer from deducting from the permit holder's remuneration, or seeking to recover from them, any charge, fee or expense arising from the permit application or from their recruitment — and makes contravening it an offence. If an agency proposes that the worker funds their own placement, the compliance exposure lands on you.
Trading without a licence is an offence. The WRC states the penalty on summary conviction as a Class C fine of up to €2,500, with a further Class D fine of up to €1,000 a day for a continuing offence. Two minutes on the WRC list is cheap insurance.
What our terms say
Fair is fair. Ours are on the same table.
CA Recruitment is on the WRC's Current Employment Agency List under licence number EA 5444, at 14 The Meadows, Ballyporeen, Co. Tipperary. You can verify that yourself on the list linked below rather than taking our word for it.
We charge a fixed recruitment fee, agreed in writing before any work begins and payable on placement — not a percentage of salary. Government and third-party costs, including the DETE permit fee and the worker's visa and travel, are passed through at cost with no markup, and you get a written breakdown of what is and is not refundable before you commit to anything.
Our placements carry a 90-day replacement guarantee, and we publish its terms in full on a separate page rather than burying them. In plain terms: if a worker leaves within their first 90 days, or you have to dismiss them for gross misconduct within that period following a fair process, we source and place a replacement and waive our recruitment fee for that replacement.
Two boundaries we would rather state here than have you discover later. It covers our fee only. An employment permit issues in respect of a named foreign national, so our terms are explicit that a replacement worker means a fresh DETE application and a fresh application fee — and any new visa, travel or Labour Market Needs Test costs are yours. And it is not a general change-of-mind clause — deciding the worker is not the right fit, a redundancy, or a dismissal for something short of gross misconduct are not covered. Talk to us anyway if one of those happens, but do not read the guarantee as covering it.
On permit refusal, we would say what we would say to any employer reading any agency's terms: get the answer in writing before you spend anything. Ours is a conversation we are happy to have on the record.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to sign a recruitment agency's terms of business for them to apply? Often not, and that is the point. Published Irish and UK agency terms routinely say the contract is accepted by conduct rather than by signature. Check whether inviting a candidate to interview, or being sent a CV, counts as accepting them. Read the document before you take the first CV, not before you sign it — by then you may already be bound.
What is a rebate scale in a recruitment agreement? A rebate is a partial refund of the placement fee if the hire leaves early, tapering week by week. Check how quickly the refund shrinks and the week it stops altogether. If it offers a replacement instead, check whether any money comes back when no replacement is found. A rebate returns some money. A replacement guarantee returns a worker. They are not the same promise, and the difference matters most on a permit hire, where the money you lose is not mainly the agency fee.
What happens to my money if DETE refuses the employment permit? Two separate pots. DETE refunds 90% of the application fee where an application is unsuccessful — for a General Employment Permit of 6 to 24 months the fee is €1,000, so roughly €900 comes back and €100 does not. Labour Market Needs Test advertising you already paid for is gone. What happens to the agency's fee is not decided by DETE — it is decided by the terms of business, and most domestic agency terms do not address permit refusal at all because they were written for hires who already have the right to work. Ask for that clause in writing before you commit.
Can a recruitment agency in Ireland charge the worker instead of me? No. To hold a WRC employment agency licence, an applicant must supply a Statement of Fees stating that they will never charge a candidate a fee. Section 7(2) of the Employment Agency Act 1971 prohibits charging any fee solely for agreeing to seek employment for another person. For permit hires, section 55 of the Employment Permits Act 2024 goes further: an employer cannot deduct from the permit holder's pay, or seek to recover from them, any charge or fee arising from the permit application or from their recruitment — and contravening it is an offence. If an agency suggests the worker pays, the exposure lands on you as the employer.
How do I check a recruitment agency is actually licensed in Ireland? The Workplace Relations Commission publishes the Current Employment Agency List as a downloadable PDF on its Employment Agencies page. Search it for the agency's name and check the licence number against what they tell you. Licences run for one year and are renewed annually for €500, so a licence number is a point-in-time fact — if the agency is not on the current list, ask why before you go further. The WRC states that trading as an employment agency without a licence is an offence carrying, on summary conviction, a Class C fine of up to €2,500, with a further Class D fine of up to €1,000 a day for a continuing offence.
What is a third-party introduction clause and why does it matter? It makes you liable for a fee if you pass a candidate's details to anyone else and that person hires them. Check whether passing a candidate's details to another business counts as an introduction, how long that lasts, and whether any refund applies. This catches ordinary, well-meant behaviour: forwarding a CV to a sister company, a franchisee, or a neighbouring business you know is short-staffed. If your group has multiple entities, resolve this before the first CV arrives.
Should CVs I already received count as the agency's candidates? Check the introduction window and how introduction is defined. Check how far back the window runs, and whether simply being sent a CV counts as an introduction. If you have been dealing with a worker directly, or they applied to you before the agency put them forward, say so in writing at the outset and get it acknowledged. It is a cheap conversation before an introduction and an expensive one afterwards.
Where CA Recruitment fits
We place workers from the Philippines with Irish and UK employers in agriculture, construction, healthcare, hospitality and care, and we run the DETE employment permit process end to end. You remain the applicant — that is how Irish permit law works — but the Labour Market Needs Test, the application, the document checks and the coordination through to arrival are ours.
If you are comparing agencies, the questions to ask before you get to the paperwork come first, and what the whole hire costs comes next. Our full work permit guide covers the process the agreement is meant to govern.
Ask us for our terms of business before you commit to anything, and ask the same of anyone else you are talking to. Get in touch and we will go through ours clause by clause — including the permit-refusal question, which we would rather answer in writing now than argue about later.
Sources: Workplace Relations Commission, Employment Agencies, Employment Agencies FAQ and the Current Employment Agency List (PDF); Employment Agency Act 1971, sections 7 and 10; Employment Permits Act 2024, section 55; Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, General Employment Permit.