Employment Permit Processing Times in Ireland
Current DETE Dates for Employers

Current DETE processing dates

These are the dates DETE reached in each queue as of 11 September 2026 — DETE’s own most recent stamp, which we read on 15 September. Read them as: "if you submitted a completed application on this date, yours is the one being decided now."

Source: DETE, Current processing dates for employment permits — DETE's figures as of 11 September 2026, checked by us on 15 September 2026. "Wait at that date" is the calendar gap between the published date and DETE's own as-of date, which is how the May baseline was measured too. DETE published no separate General Employment Permit line in May, so that row has no like-for-like baseline. Movement compares against DETE's own published position as of 8 May 2026, from the Internet Archive capture of 10 May 2026 — the last capture of that page before our August read. Verify the live figures on DETE's own page.

What moved, what stalled, what slipped

DETE publishes the dates. It does not tell you which direction they are heading. That is the part that decides whether you can promise a candidate a start date, so we track it.

The headline: every first-time permit queue is now ahead of where it was in May; renewals and appeals are still behind. The intra-company transfer queue has moved on every DETE update since mid-August and, at three days, is now the shortest wait on the table.

• Critical Skills — moving forward. A three-week wait in May, about a week now — the strongest argument there is for checking whether your role qualifies for the Critical Skills route before defaulting to a GEP.
• New General Employment Permits — moving forward, slowly. DETE did not publish a separate GEP line in May; it sat inside a combined "all new applications except Critical Skills" row with a nine-week wait, so there is no like-for-like May figure for this row. Our own reading on 5 August had the queue at 26 June; it now stands at 6 August, so it has advanced 41 days. We did not record DETE's own "as of" stamp that day, so read that as the direction of travel rather than a precise rate. Between DETE's 4 and 11 September stamps the queue advanced seven days in seven days of calendar, so the wait held at about five weeks.
• All other new applications — still the queue that will not move. It has sat on 21 July on every DETE stamp we have read since 19 August — 31 August and 11 September included. Three and a half weeks of calendar have passed and no applications were cleared, so the wait has stretched from about four weeks to seven and a half. Against May's nine weeks it is still a week and a half ahead, and that margin is shrinking by a day per day. The category was split out from the combined May row, so that comparison is not exact.
• Intra-company transfers (new) — the queue being cleared. Flat at five weeks from May right through mid-August, then it moved: 13 July on DETE's 19 August stamp, 7 August on 31 August, and 8 September now — 57 days of queue cleared in a little over three weeks. Since our last edition alone it advanced from 25 August to 8 September, a fortnight. The wait has come in from five weeks to three days, the shortest on the table. Two consecutive DETE updates each clearing more than three weeks of applications is a backlog being worked down, not noise. A three-day wait cannot get much shorter, so the thing to watch now is whether it holds there.
• Renewals — still behind May, but moving again. Ten and a half weeks in May, about eleven and a half now. The queue has been moving since mid-August: our 19 August reading had it on 11 May, DETE's 31 August stamp had it on 3 June, and it now stands on 22 June, so the wait has come in from just over fourteen weeks to about eleven and a half. Since our last edition it advanced eleven days, from 11 June. The "going backwards" reading no longer holds, though it is still about a week slower than May. The two renewal queues remain a day apart — general renewals on 22 June 2026, intra-company transfer renewals on 23 June. This is the line that catches employers out, and it is covered below.
• Reviews and appeals — the worst queue on the table. Twenty-two weeks in May, about thirty-three now — seven and a half months. It edged forward by eighteen days, from 6 January to 24 January, on DETE's 31 August stamp and has not moved on the two stamps since, so the wait is growing again by a day per day. It is now eleven weeks worse than May. A refused application is not something you appeal and expect back quickly. Getting it right first time has never mattered more.

What this means for your hire

The processing date is one stage of five. Here is what today's dates translate into if you start the process now, in September 2026.

If your role needs a General Employment Permit

Care assistants, chefs, construction trades, farm and meat-processing operatives, HGV drivers.

• Role definition, salary check and the 28-day Labour Market Needs Test — you cannot apply until the 28 days are complete. Realistic submission: early October 2026.
• DETE decision queue at today's pace, about five weeks — decision around mid-November 2026.
• Employment D-visa for a worker from a visa-required country such as the Philippines, four to eight weeks — December 2026 to January 2027.
• Travel, arrival, IRP registration and onboarding — a further one to two weeks.

Add those up and the arithmetic lands on a start date around late January or February 2027 — roughly five months. We tell employers to plan for six to eight months, which puts a realistic first day between March and May 2027. The gap between the two is not padding, and the section below explains exactly where it goes.

If your role qualifies for a Critical Skills Permit

Nurses, doctors, engineers, certain IT roles — anything on the Critical Skills Occupations List.

No Labour Market Needs Test, and a decision queue currently running at about a week. Submit in early October, expect a decision inside a fortnight, then four to eight weeks for the visa. Plan for three to five months — a first day between December 2026 and February 2027. Same worker, same country, three months earlier, purely because of the permit type.

If you have a permit coming up for renewal

This is the one that quietly bites. The renewal queue is sitting on 22 June 2026 — about eleven and a half weeks. It has been moving forward since mid-August, but it is still about a week slower than it was in the spring.

Apply today and, if the queue holds at eleven and a half weeks, a decision lands around the first week of December 2026. This queue has swung in both directions in four months, so we add a margin: if a worker's permit expires before mid-December 2026 and you have not applied yet, you are already inside the queue's own wait. You can apply to renew a General Employment Permit up to four months before it expires. At the current pace, use every week of that.

Why we say six to eight months when the arithmetic says five

You will see shorter numbers quoted elsewhere — four to six months is common. Those figures are not wrong; they are the sum of the published stages with nothing going sideways. We quote six to eight months because in practice something usually does.

The time that is missing from the arithmetic:

• Embassy appointment availability. The four-to-eight-week visa window starts when the application is lodged, not when the permit lands. Appointment slots in Manila are not available on demand.
• Document gathering. Qualifications, references, police clearance and medicals sit with the candidate, in another country, on another timezone.
• Candidate notice periods. Good candidates are usually employed. Four to eight weeks of notice is normal.
• Returned applications. A missing document or a salary below the legal floor sends the file back, and you lose your place in the queue. With appeals now running at about thirty-three weeks, a refusal costs you the better part of a year once you count the months already spent.

So: six to eight months for a General Employment Permit hire, three to five for Critical Skills. That is the figure we plan against and the figure we quote in a proposal. If today's dates hold and nothing slips, you may well beat it. We would rather you were early than disappointed.

There is no fast-track queue — and no Trusted Partner stream

DETE publishes one queue per application type and works through it in date order of receipt of the fully completed form and fee. There is no second, faster column on that table for any category of employer, and no registration you can now apply for that would put you in a different queue.

The Trusted Partner Initiative no longer exists as a separate registration. Every employer now holds a portal account with current Revenue and CRO details, and DETE states that because all employers must submit Revenue documentation and a CRO number to maintain that account, there is no longer a requirement for a separate Trusted Partner Initiative. What the scheme used to give you comes as standard. DETE's own General Employment Permit and Critical Skills pages still describe an application being placed in a queue "depending on the Employer type, that is, Trusted Partner or Standard". We can't reconcile that with the Trusted Partner update above, and DETE publishes only one date per application type — so if employer type still affects your position, DETE does not publish it. Either way, there is no registration open to you that would change it.

The lever you do control is the date on your application. Your place in the queue runs from the day DETE holds a fully completed form and the fee — so anything sent in short of a document is not holding the date you think it is.

How CA Recruitment keeps your hire on track

We track these dates against your live application and tell you when they move. We run candidate sourcing in parallel with the Labour Market Needs Test so the 28 days are not dead time. We prepare the application to go in complete, because a returned file costs you your queue position and, at current appeal times, a refusal costs you the better part of a year. And we give you a start date you can repeat to your candidate without having to walk it back.

Monette is Filipino, based in Ireland, and has run this process from both ends. No recruitment fee is payable until your worker starts.

For the full stage-by-stage explanation of how these dates fit into the wider hiring journey, read our detailed employer guide to permit processing times.

Frequently asked questions