Somewhere right now an Irish employer is turning away a strong candidate with the words "sorry, we can't sponsor visas" — and losing the hire over a system Ireland doesn't even have. "Visa sponsorship" is a phrase imported from the UK and the US, where sponsoring means licences, per-hire certificates and government audits. In Ireland it means something far simpler, and most employers who think they can't do it are wrong.
Correct as of 12 August 2026. The permit fees, salary floors and processing times quoted below change during the year, and UK sponsorship fees change on their own schedule. Get in touch and we will verify the current position for your specific role before you spend anything on the process.
The short answer
"Visa sponsorship" is not a legal term in the Irish system. There is no sponsor licence, no register of approved sponsors, and no application to become one.
When a candidate asks "do you offer visa sponsorship?", what they're really asking in an Irish context is: will you back an employment permit application and support my visa? That breaks into two concrete things:
- The employment permit — an application to the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment (DETE) built around your business and the specific job: your company details, the role, the salary, and in most cases a labour market needs test you run first.
- Visa support — for a worker from a visa-required country such as the Philippines, supplying the documents their long stay (D) employment visa application needs: the approved permit, the signed contract of employment, and a letter from you confirming the job.
That's the whole of it. If you can offer a genuine job at the correct salary, you can "sponsor". The full split between the two steps is covered in our work permit vs work visa guide — this post is about what saying yes actually commits you to.
No sponsor licence: Ireland vs the UK
The "we can't sponsor" reflex usually comes from employers who've heard how the UK system works — or who've read job-ad templates written for the UK market.
In the UK, an employer must hold a sponsor licence from the Home Office before hiring most non-UK workers. Getting one means an application, a fee, and proving your HR systems can track sponsored staff. Every hire then needs a Certificate of Sponsorship, most sponsored hires attract an immigration skills charge on top, and the licence itself carries ongoing reporting duties, compliance visits and the risk of suspension — lose the licence and every sponsored worker's permission is at risk.
In Ireland, none of that machinery exists. Each hire is a standalone employment permit application to DETE, judged on its own merits. There is no company-level approval to win first, no certificate to assign, no skills charge, and no licence that an inspector can take away.
The closest Ireland comes to "registering as a sponsor" is your account on DETE's Employment Permits Online portal. You verify your company once with your Revenue documentation and CRO number, the permits team validates it, and the portal prompts you when the details need renewing. It costs nothing — it's identity verification, not a licence. (DETE previously ran a separate Trusted Partner registration for regular hirers; that scheme has been absorbed into the portal, so there's no longer even that form to file.)
So when a candidate from Manila or Mumbai asks whether you can sponsor them, the honest Irish answer is: there's nothing we need to be — only a process we need to run.
Is there a Certificate of Sponsorship in Ireland?
No. Ireland has no Certificate of Sponsorship, and there is nothing you need to obtain, assign or pay for before you can hire a non-EEA worker. If a candidate, a job board or a CV template has told you otherwise, it's describing the UK.
Knowing what the UK document actually is helps, because it's the thing employers picture when they say "we can't sponsor". A Certificate of Sponsorship is, in the Home Office's own words, "an electronic record, not a physical document" — a reference number you assign to one named worker from your sponsor licence account, which they then quote on their visa application. You can't assign one without the licence, which currently costs £611 to apply for as a small or charitable sponsor and £1,682 as a medium or large one. For most Skilled Worker hires an immigration skills charge follows the certificate: £480 for the first 12 months for a small or charitable sponsor, £1,320 for a medium or large one, with more for every further six months. That is the machinery the phrase carries with it.
Ireland has none of it. No certificate exists, so there is nothing to assign, nothing to run out of, and no account to hold one in.
What does the same job here is the employment permit — and it works the other way round. A Certificate of Sponsorship is issued off the back of a licence you already hold. An Irish employment permit is a standalone application for one job and one worker, judged on its own merits, with no prior status required. You apply to the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment through Employment Permits Online, submitting the contract, the salary, the labour market needs test where it applies, and your company records. The fee is €500 for a permit of six months or less and €1,000 for a permit of more than six months up to 24 months, and if the application is unsuccessful the Department refunds 90% of it. There is no licence fee beneath that figure and no skills charge on top — the wider cost picture is in our guide to what an overseas hire actually costs.
One point is worth stating plainly, because it's where Irish practice diverges hardest from what employers sometimes assume: the permit fee is yours to carry. Under section 55 of the Employment Permits Act 2024 an employer may not deduct from the permit holder's wages, or seek to recover from them, any charge, fee or expense arising out of the permit application, their recruitment, or travel expenses already paid to them. The same bar applies to anyone connected with the employer, an agency included. Contravening it is a criminal offence.
So when a candidate asks whether you can provide a Certificate of Sponsorship, the accurate answer isn't "no". It's: Ireland doesn't use one — I can apply for an employment permit for this role, and that permit is what you'll use to apply for your visa. Those are two separate documents from two separate government departments, and treating them as one is the most common way an otherwise-sound file loses months. Our work permit vs work visa guide sets out exactly who arranges which.
What you're actually signing up for
Strip the imported vocabulary away and sponsoring a worker in Ireland is three commitments.
A genuine job at the right salary. The permit application is anchored to a signed contract of employment for a real vacancy. The salary must meet the legal floor for the role — €36,605 a year for most General Employment Permit roles, €32,691 (a minimum hourly rate of €16.12) for Health Care Assistants and certain other listed roles, and Sectoral Employment Order rates for construction craft trades of roughly €48,150 a year since 1 August 2026. You pay the higher of the legal floor and the wage you advertised.
The employment permit application. For most roles this is the General Employment Permit route: run the Labour Market Needs Test — advertising the vacancy on JobsIreland.ie, on EURES, and on at least one other online platform for at least 28 continuous days — three platforms but two postings, since registering on jobsireland.ie places the notice with DSP and puts it on EURES — then submit the application to DETE at least 12 weeks before the proposed start date, with the contract, the worker's details and your company records. Our step-by-step application guide walks through the mechanics, and the General Employment Permit guide covers eligibility and the salary floors in detail.
Supporting the visa. Once the permit is granted, a visa-required worker applies for their long stay (D) employment visa through AVATS in their home country. It's their application, but half the file comes from you: the permit, the contract, and an employer letter on headed paper. A missing or sloppy employer letter is one of the most common reasons a visa file stalls after a perfectly good permit approval.
Add the stages together and the realistic timeline is around six months from starting the process to the worker's first day — the 28-day test, the DETE processing queue, roughly 8 weeks for the visa decision, then travel. Anyone promising you a sponsored hire "in a few weeks" is describing one link in the chain.
The obligations that come with it
Sponsorship in Ireland is lighter than the UK version, but it isn't obligation-free. Here's what you're committing to, honestly stated.
- Pay what the permit says, for the role the permit names. The permit is specific to your business and the job. The salary, title and hours on the permit are what DETE approved — if the role changes materially, that's a conversation with the Department, not a quiet internal reshuffle.
- The 50:50 rule. DETE will not issue a permit unless at least half your workforce are EEA, Swiss or UK citizens on the day you apply. It's counted across your whole headcount, and it applies to renewals too.
- The permit fee stays with you. Under section 55 of the Employment Permits Act 2024, you cannot deduct the application fee from the worker's wages or recover it from them in any way.
- Ordinary employer duties apply in full. A permit holder has the same employment rights as any Irish employee — minimum notice, working time rules, payslips, the lot. The permit adds a layer of paperwork; it doesn't create a separate class of employee.
- Keep your records straight. The same job title, salary and hours should appear on the contract, the permit application and the employer letter for the visa. Inconsistency between documents is what invites questions, and questions add weeks.
What you are not signed up for is monitoring the worker's immigration status day to day. Registration with immigration after arrival, the Irish Residence Permit card, visa renewals — those are the worker's own applications, made in their own name.
What sponsoring costs
For a typical General Employment Permit hire, the government side of "sponsorship" is one fee:
- Employment permit fee (DETE): €1,000 for a permit of more than six months up to 24 months, or €500 for six months or less — paid with the application, and 90% refunded if it's refused.
- Sponsor licence fee: none — the concept doesn't exist here.
- Immigration skills charge: none of that either.
- Entry visa (€60 single entry) and registration (€300): these belong to the worker, not you. Some employers reimburse them as part of a relocation package; that's a choice, not a rule.
The real costs of an overseas hire sit elsewhere: the salary at the correct floor, your time (or an agency's fee) running the Labour Market Needs Test and the application properly, and the recruitment itself. But the "sponsorship" line on the budget — the thing employers imagine as a UK-style licence programme — is a four-figure permit fee with a 90% refund on refusal.
What you're NOT signing up for
Three fears keep coming up in first conversations with employers, and all three are imported from other countries' systems.
"We'll be audited as a sponsor." There's no sponsor licence, so there's no sponsor-licence compliance regime. You're subject to ordinary Irish employment law inspection like every other employer — the Workplace Relations Commission doesn't run a separate visa-sponsor programme.
"We're responsible for them forever." No. Your commitment is the job and the permit built on it. The worker's immigration permission, registration and any family applications are personal applications made in their own name. If the employment ends, you notify the Department — you don't inherit an open-ended liability.
"They're locked to us, and we're locked to them." Also no, in both directions. Since the Employment Permits Act 2024, a permit holder who has completed nine months in the State can apply to change employer within the same type of role without starting a new permit from scratch — so retention comes from being a decent employer, not from the paperwork. And on your side of the risk: when CA Recruitment makes the placement, our 90-day guarantee means that if the worker leaves in the first 90 days, or is dismissed for gross misconduct, we replace them and the guarantee covers our recruitment fee — the DETE fee, visa and travel costs sit outside it, which is why we put it in writing rather than in slogans.
The candidates you're turning away
Here's what the confusion actually costs. Every job ad that says "no visa sponsorship" in an Irish context is declining something the employer was never being asked for — a UK licence they don't need — while turning away qualified, motivated candidates from the Philippines and beyond who only need what Irish employers can already give: a genuine job and a properly run permit application.
CA Recruitment exists to run exactly that process. We source the worker — most of our placements are experienced Filipino candidates — check the role and salary floor, run the Labour Market Needs Test to the letter, prepare and submit the DETE application, and walk the worker through the visa file so it matches the permit line for line. You sign a contract and approve documents; we do the rest.
If "we can't sponsor" has been your default answer, message us on WhatsApp with the role you're struggling to fill. We'll tell you in plain terms what sponsoring it would involve — timeline, salary floor and cost — before you commit to anything.
Frequently asked questions
Can an Irish employer sponsor a work visa? Yes — though Ireland doesn't use the word "sponsorship" in law. Sponsoring a worker in Ireland means offering a genuine job, backing an employment permit application to the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, and supplying the contract and employer letter the worker's visa application needs. Any employer registered with Revenue and the CRO and trading in Ireland can do it — there is no licence to obtain first.
Is there a Certificate of Sponsorship in Ireland? No. Ireland has no Certificate of Sponsorship and no equivalent instrument, so there is nothing for an employer to assign to a worker. The UK certificate is a per-hire electronic record issued from a sponsor licence account; what does the same job in Ireland is the employment permit itself — a standalone application you make to the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment for one named job and one named worker, costing €1,000 for a permit of more than six months up to 24 months. That permit is the document the worker then uses to apply for their employment visa.
Does Ireland have a sponsor licence system like the UK? No. A UK employer must hold a Home Office sponsor licence before hiring most non-UK workers — currently £611 to apply for a small or charitable sponsor and £1,682 for a medium or large one — and the licence carries ongoing reporting duties, compliance visits and the risk of suspension. Ireland has no licence, no register of approved sponsors and no immigration skills charge. The only company-level step is verifying your business on the Employment Permits Online portal with your Revenue documentation and CRO number, which carries no fee.
What does it cost an employer to sponsor a worker in Ireland? The Department fee for a General Employment Permit is €1,000 for a permit of more than six months up to 24 months (€500 for six months or less), with 90% refunded if the application is unsuccessful. There is no licence fee and no annual skills charge. The worker's entry visa (€60 single entry) and €300 immigration registration fee are personal costs, though some employers choose to reimburse them. Under section 55 of the Employment Permits Act 2024 the permit fee cannot be recovered from the worker.
How long does visa sponsorship take in Ireland? Plan for around six months from starting the process to the worker's first day. The Labour Market Needs Test runs for 28 days where it applies, the permit application must reach the Department at least 12 weeks before the proposed start date, and the worker then needs a long stay (D) employment visa — Immigration Service Delivery advises roughly 8 weeks for a decision — plus time to travel and relocate.
Can a small business or farm sponsor an overseas worker? Yes. There is no minimum company size. The requirements are that you are registered with Revenue and the Companies Registration Office (or as a sole trader), trading in Ireland, offering a genuine role at the correct salary floor, and that at least 50% of your employees are EEA, Swiss or UK citizens on the day you apply — the 50:50 rule. Plenty of CA Recruitment's placements are with farms, nursing homes and family-run businesses.