Staff Shortage in Ireland? Your Options for Hiring Overseas Workers

If you have spent the last few months advertising a role, sifting through almost no applications, and watching the work pile up, you are not doing anything wrong. Across farms, building sites, kitchens, and care homes, Irish employers are running into the same wall: the local candidate simply isn't there.

This guide is for the employer at the frustration stage — the one who keeps re-posting the same ad and getting nowhere. It covers what's actually driving the shortage, why local hiring keeps falling short, and the one route most employers haven't seriously looked at yet: hiring a worker from overseas under an Irish work permit.

What Can You Actually Do About a Staff Shortage?

Here is the short answer, before the detail. Once you have genuinely tried and failed to fill a role from the Irish and EEA labour market, you can hire a non-EEA worker through a DETE employment permit. The process is defined, it is legal, and it is built for exactly this situation.

The steps, in plain order:

1. Confirm the role is on DETE's eligible occupations list
2. Check that at least 50% of your workforce is EEA (the 50/50 rule)
3. Run a 28-day Labour Market Needs Test — advertise the role to prove no local candidate was available
4. Apply to DETE for the employment permit, usually the General Employment Permit
5. Your worker applies for an employment D-visa and travels to Ireland

The rest of this guide explains why this route exists, who it works for, and what it costs in money and time. If you want the full step-by-step from the start, our guide on how to hire overseas workers in Ireland walks through every stage.

What's Driving the Shortage

It's not one thing, and it's not just your sector. A few forces are stacking up at once.

Near-full employment. Ireland has been running at close to full employment, which sounds good until you are the one trying to hire. When almost everyone who wants a job already has one, the pool of available local candidates for a manual, shift-based, or specialist role shrinks to almost nothing.

An ageing workforce in specific trades. In farming, construction, and care especially, experienced workers are retiring faster than younger Irish workers are replacing them. The skills are walking out the door and not enough people are walking in.

Roles that locals increasingly won't take. Early starts on a dairy farm, weekend kitchen shifts, physically demanding site work, the emotional weight of care work — these roles are real, they need filling, and they are getting harder to fill from a domestic pool that has other options.

EEA workers are no longer the easy backstop. For years, gaps got filled by workers from elsewhere in the EU. That flow has thinned. Wages and conditions improved across the EU, and Ireland is no longer the obvious destination it once was for a Polish welder or a Latvian carer.

None of this is a temporary blip you can wait out. It's structural. Which is why "just keep advertising" usually doesn't work.

Why Local Hiring Isn't Closing the Gap

Most employers don't reach for the overseas route first. They do everything else first — and that's normal. The problem is that the usual playbook has a ceiling, and a lot of employers are now hitting it.

You raise the wage. You re-write the ad. You go through three recruitment agencies. You offer a sign-on incentive. Maybe you get one or two applicants who don't show up to interview, or who start and leave inside a fortnight. The role stays open, the existing team picks up the slack, and burnout starts to creep in.

The hard truth is this: if the local candidate genuinely isn't there, no amount of re-advertising conjures one up. At some point you are not solving a marketing problem — you are looking at a supply problem. That's the point where the overseas route stops being a last resort and starts being the obvious answer.

And there's a practical upside to having tried locally first. The Labour Market Needs Test — the advertising step DETE requires before you can hire from overseas — is exactly that record of having tried. The months you've already spent advertising aren't wasted; they're part of the evidence the process needs.

The Overseas Option: GEP and CSEP

Ireland has a legal, well-trodden route for hiring non-EEA workers when a role can't be filled locally. It runs through DETE — the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment — and there are two main permit types.

The General Employment Permit (GEP)

This is the route for the vast majority of the roles Irish employers struggle to fill — farm operatives, care assistants, chefs, construction trades, drivers, and more. It covers most occupations and most sectors.

The salary floor for a standard GEP role is a minimum of €36,605 per year (updated by DETE in March 2026). Certain shortage occupations have a different floor — for example healthcare assistants, where the minimum is an hourly rate of €16.12 per hour, which works out at €32,691 a year on a 39-hour week and €33,529.60 on a 40-hour week. Construction trades are a special case and usually sit well above the standard floor — more on that below.

The Critical Skills Employment Permit (CSEP)

The CSEP is for higher-paid, higher-demand roles — those on the Critical Skills Occupations List, or any role paying above €68,911 a year. Its big advantage is that it skips the Labour Market Needs Test and offers a faster route to long-term residence. But for the everyday shortage roles most employers are dealing with, the GEP is the route.

Which Sectors Can Hire Overseas Right Now

Most sectors can — with the caveat that DETE keeps an ineligible occupations list, and roles on it cannot be filled through a permit regardless of how long you advertise. The lists change, so always check the current version at enterprise.gov.ie before you commit to anything.

Where CA Recruitment places workers:

• Agriculture — dairy and farm operatives, pig unit staff, horticulture workers
• Construction — a range of trades, with more roles opened to the permit route in a DETE update on 28 May 2026. See our piece on the construction labour shortage in Ireland for what changed and which trades are now eligible
• Healthcare and care — healthcare assistants and care workers, one of the most acute shortages in the country. Our guide on the healthcare assistant shortage in Ireland covers it in depth
• Hospitality — chefs especially, where local supply has collapsed. See the chef shortage in Ireland 2026
• Other sectors — logistics, manufacturing, and more, role by role against the eligible list

A note on construction pay, because employers get caught out here. Construction trades are covered by Sectoral Employment Orders, which set legally binding hourly minimums that sit above the €36,605 GEP threshold. A construction craftsperson rate is roughly €46,600 a year and rises each August. If you budget a trades role at the standard GEP floor, you will underpay and the permit can be refused. Use the SEO rate, not the GEP minimum.

Cost and Timeline, Honestly

No overselling here. Hiring from overseas costs money and takes time. Knowing the real numbers up front is what separates employers who get a worker on the ground from those who give up halfway.

Cost

• DETE permit fee: €1,000 for a GEP issued up to 24 months. 90% is refundable if the application is refused.
• Visa, flights, and onboarding: additional costs on the worker's side, some of which the employer commonly covers.
• Agency fee: if you use a managed agency, there's a placement fee — but a reputable one is transparent about its fee upfront.
• The salary itself: at least the minimum remuneration for the occupation, which is the binding floor.

Timeline

Plan for around six months from your first serious conversation to the worker's first day. The Labour Market Needs Test runs for 28 days. DETE processing has recently been running at roughly 11 to 12 weeks. The employment D-visa adds a further 4 to 8 weeks, then there's travel and onboarding. Some of these steps overlap, but anyone quoting you "a few weeks" is not describing the full journey.

The biggest lever you control is when you start. A role you start the process on today is a worker on the ground around the end of the year. The wall doesn't move on its own.

What a Managed Agency Actually Does

You can run this process yourself. Plenty of employers do. But it's paperwork-heavy, the rules shift, and a single mistake — a 50/50 ratio that slipped during the advertising window, an ineligible job title, a thin LMNT file — can cost you months. That's the gap a managed agency fills.

CA Recruitment is a Filipino-owned agency based in Tipperary, founded by Monette Russell. Monette is from the Philippines and has been through the Irish permit system herself, from both sides — as someone who navigated it personally and as the person who now runs it for Irish employers. Employers we work with include PJ Ryan at Ballymorris Pig Farm and Joe Colville at Ecoville Construction.

What we manage for every placement:

• The 50/50 ratio check and eligibility confirmation, before anything else moves
• The Labour Market Needs Test — advice, documentation, and compliance review
• Candidate sourcing, screening, and presentation
• The DETE permit application — preparation, submission, and handling any queries
• The D-visa process on the Philippine side, through our DMW-accredited partner agency
• Onboarding: PPS number, IRP registration, and accommodation support

Our recruitment fee is agreed upfront and separate from government costs.

Frequently Asked Questions