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 5 October 2026 — DETE’s own most recent stamp, which we read on 6 October. 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 5 October 2026, checked by us on 6 October 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: renewals caught up, and the queue that sprinted last week stopped again. Renewals cleared ten days of applications in seven, as did Critical Skills and new intra-company transfers. The "all other new applications" queue, which cleared twenty-three days the week before, did not move at all. New General Employment Permits were slow for a second week running, and reviews and appeals have not moved since 21 September.

• Critical Skills — still the fastest first-time queue. A three-week wait in May, about a week now. Between DETE's 28 September and 5 October stamps it cleared ten days of applications in seven days of calendar, bringing the wait down from about a week and a half. It remains 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 — slowing. 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 26 August. It had held at about five weeks on every stamp we read from early August, but it advanced only three days in the week to 28 September and six in the week to 5 October, so the wait is now forty days — about five and a half weeks, edging towards six. Two slow weeks in a row is worth noting, not yet a trend. This is the queue most of our clients' roles sit in, so it is the one we will be watching.
• All other new applications — stopped again. It sat on 21 July on every DETE stamp we read from 19 August to 21 September, and its wait stretched from about four weeks to nine with nothing cleared. DETE's 28 September stamp moved it to 13 August, twenty-three days cleared in seven. The 5 October stamp still reads 13 August, so the wait has grown back to about seven and a half weeks — still about a week and a half faster than May. This queue moves in jumps, not steadily. The category was split out from the combined May row, so that comparison is not exact.
• Intra-company transfers (new) — the shortest wait on the table. 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, 8 September on 11 September, 16 September on 21 September, 21 September on 28 September, and 1 October now. The wait is four days, inside about a week for a fourth consecutive stamp.
• Renewals — a better week. Ten and a half weeks in May, about twelve now. Our 19 August reading had the queue on 11 May, DETE's 31 August stamp had it on 3 June, 11 September on 22 June, 21 September on 29 June and 28 September on 3 July — the last two of those clearing less than a week of applications per week, so the wait grew. The 5 October stamp puts it on 13 July: ten days cleared in seven, bringing the wait back down by about half a week. It is still about a week and a half slower than May. General renewals stand on 13 July, intra-company transfer renewals on 14 July. This is the line that catches employers out, and it is covered below.
• Reviews and appeals — stopped since the September clearance. Twenty-two weeks in May and about thirty-three at the start of September, before DETE's 21 September stamp cleared eighty days of this queue in ten days of calendar and brought it to 14 April 2026. The 28 September and 5 October stamps both still read 14 April: the clearance was not reversed, but nothing further has been decided, so the wait has grown from about twenty-three weeks to twenty-five. Nearly six months is a long time to wait for a decision you should not have needed. A refused application is still not something you appeal and expect back quickly.

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 early October 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: mid-November 2026.
• DETE decision queue at today's pace, about five and a half weeks — decision around late December 2026.
• Employment D-visa for a worker from a visa-required country such as the Philippines, four to eight weeks — late January to late February 2027.
• Travel, arrival, IRP registration and onboarding — a further one to two weeks.

Add those up and the arithmetic lands on a start date between late January and early March 2027 — roughly four to five months. We tell employers to plan for six to eight months, which puts a realistic first day between early April and early June 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 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 early January and early March 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 13 July 2026 — about twelve weeks. It lost about half a week on each of two updates in September, then cleared ten days of applications in the week to 5 October, and it is now about a week and a half slower than it was in the spring.

Apply today and, if the queue holds at twelve weeks, a decision lands around the end 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-January 2027 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 stage-by-stage arithmetic is shorter

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 running at about twenty-five weeks even after DETE's September clearance, a refusal still costs you months on top of 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 months you cannot get back. 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