Logistics Recruitment Agency Ireland
HGV drivers placed, work permits managed

Logistics Labour in Ireland

Ireland's logistics and warehousing sector has expanded rapidly, driven by e-commerce growth and Ireland's role as a European hub for multinational companies. But workforce supply hasn't kept pace — distribution centres, freight depots, and cold chain operations routinely struggle to fill shifts with reliable local staff.

The driver shortage is the sharper end of it. Seats sit empty not because there is no work but because there is nobody licensed to do it, and the domestic pool has been picked over by every operator in the country. CA Recruitment works as a logistics recruitment agency on the one route the domestic agencies do not run — sourcing drivers from outside the EEA and carrying the DETE employment permit process end to end.

What a Logistics Recruitment Agency Does for a Permit Hire

Most logistics recruitment agencies in Ireland do one job, and do it well: they find drivers and warehouse staff who are already living here with the right to work, and they put them in front of you. If your problem is covering next month’s roster, that is the correct service and you should use it.

A permit hire is a different piece of work. The driver is outside the EEA, has no right to work in Ireland, and cannot get one until the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment (DETE) issues an employment permit naming your company as the employer. That is not sourcing with paperwork bolted on — it is a regulated application in which you are the applicant and you sign the declaration. Here is the honest division of labour on a CA Recruitment driver placement.

• Licence verification first, before anything else. The permit turns on the driving licence category, not on experience. We confirm the candidate holds a category CE or C1E licence, or an equivalent recognised through a Road Safety Authority mutual recognition agreement, before you ever see the CV. Ours.
• Sourcing and vetting overseas. Shortlisting against your operation — fleet, tachograph discipline, ADR or refrigerated experience, shift pattern. Ours, not yours.
• The Labour Market Needs Test. 28 days of advertising on the DSP Employment Services/EURES network plus an additional online platform before an application can be submitted. We write the ads, place them, and keep the evidence pack DETE asks for. Ours; the advertising cost is yours.
• The DETE employment permit application. We prepare and submit it. You are the applicant, so you sign the employer declaration and provide payroll and workforce evidence, including the 50:50 check. Shared — and this is the step no domestic agency runs.
• The employment visa. Applied for by the driver from their home country once the permit issues, with our coordination on documents and appointments. Ours and the driver’s; you do nothing here.
• Arrival and the first 90 days. IRP registration with Immigration Service Delivery, PPS number, bank account, and check-ins through the guarantee period. There is also a licence step specific to drivers: the first permit can issue on the recognised foreign licence, but renewal requires an Irish CE/C1E licence, so the exchange has to happen during that first permit period. We flag it at the start rather than in month twenty. Ours; you provide the contract, the induction and the runs.

That middle block is the whole difference. An agency placing an EU-resident driver never touches DETE, never runs a Labour Market Needs Test, and never has to answer for a refused permit — because there is no permit. We run the same process across every sector we work in; the cross-sector picture is on our overseas recruitment agency page, and the full driver mechanics, including which jurisdictions hold licence recognition agreements with the RSA, are in our HGV driver hiring guide.

Who we actually place — and who we do not

Worth saying plainly, because several agencies ranking alongside this page are pitched at supply-chain professionals: demand planners, procurement managers, logistics analysts. That is not what we do. CA Recruitment places drivers and operational staff on employment permits. If you are recruiting a European supply-chain manager, a specialist search firm is the better call.

There is a harder version of the same honesty, and it is the one that costs us work. If your gap is warehouse operatives, the permit route does not solve it — and no agency, ours included, can make it solve it. Elementary storage occupations, fork-lift truck drivers, van drivers and stock control clerks all sit on the ineligible occupations list, so DETE will not grant a permit for those roles however the candidate is certified. An agency that takes your instruction for a warehouse operative hire on the overseas permit route is selling you something that cannot be delivered. We would rather tell you that in the first conversation.

Roles We Fill

Important: Elementary warehouse and storage operatives, fork-lift truck drivers, van drivers, and stock control clerks are on DETE's Ineligible Occupations List and cannot be sponsored for a General Employment Permit. The logistics role that does qualify is HGV/LGV driver — but only where the driver holds a recognised CE or C1E licence (bus and coach drivers qualify on the same basis with a category D, DE, D1 or D1E licence, or an equivalent recognised by the Road Safety Authority). Supervisory and management roles may qualify depending on the exact job. We confirm eligibility for your specific role before anything starts.

The Permit Process

• 1

  Free Consultation

  We assess the role and your current workforce to confirm eligibility and the correct permit route. No obligation or charge.

• 2

  Sourcing, Vetting & Labour Market Test

  We source and vet candidates in the Philippines and manage the 28-day labour market advertising requirement (JobsIreland.ie + EURES + one other online platform — three platforms, two postings, since registering on jobsireland.ie covers both JobsIreland and EURES) before submitting the application.

• 3

  Placement & 90-Day Support

  We support the worker's arrival and first 90 days.

Fees, the Guarantee, and What Happens if the Permit Is Refused

Every agency on this search result will quote you a fee. Only the ones running permits have to tell you what happens when a government department says no, so here is all three parts in plain terms.

What CA Recruitment charges

Our recruitment fee is agreed with you in writing before any work begins, and nothing is payable to us until the driver arrives and starts with you. We quote it against your specific role at the free consultation rather than publishing a number here, because the role and the vacancy change the work. What we will not do is start sourcing on a handshake — the fee, the payment trigger and the cost breakdown go in the agreement first. If you want to know what a recruitment agreement should contain before you sign one with anybody, we wrote that up in our guide to recruitment agency terms of business in Ireland.

What the government and third parties charge

These costs are yours, not ours, and we pass them straight through at cost — we never mark them up:

• The DETE employment permit application fee — €1,000 for a General Employment Permit of 6 to 24 months, paid to the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. A permit of 6 months or less is €500.
• Labour Market Needs Test advertising costs, where required.
• The driver’s visa, travel, medical and relocation costs, and the Irish licence exchange during the first permit period.

You get a written breakdown of every expected cost, and what is and is not refundable, before you commit to anything.

The 90-day replacement guarantee

If a driver we place leaves your employment within their first 90 days, or you have to dismiss them for gross misconduct within that period following a fair disciplinary process, we source and place a replacement and waive our recruitment fee for that replacement. The 90 days are calendar days, counted from the driver’s first day of employment with you.

Two limits worth reading before you rely on it. First, it covers our fee only — the replacement driver needs their own employment permit, because a permit is issued in respect of a named worker and follows that worker rather than the vacancy, so the DETE fee, visa and travel for the replacement are payable again. It is not a money-back guarantee and we will not describe it as one. Second, it does not apply where you decide the driver is not the right fit on grounds of preference or general performance, where you dismiss for any reason other than gross misconduct, where the role is made redundant or the business restructures, or where the employment ends because the terms differed from the contract and permit application. The full terms are on our 90-day replacement guarantee terms page.

If DETE refuses the permit

It happens, and the honest answer is that it costs you money. If an application is unsuccessful, DETE refunds 90% of the application fee to the applicant — that is you where you are the applicant, so €900 of the €1,000 comes back. Third-party costs already spent, such as Labour Market Needs Test advertising, are generally not recoverable from anyone.

Which is why the eligibility check comes first and comes free. Driver permits are not quota-capped, so there is no fill risk on the roles this page is about — the quota table substituted on 13 May 2026 by S.I. 213/2026 lists no driver role at all, and the HGV/Bus mechanic cap of 442 that sits in it is a different occupation. But the licence category, the 50:50 workforce rule and the €36,605 salary floor are each capable of sinking an application on their own. We check all three before you spend a euro, and if the answer is that your vacancy will not qualify, we tell you that instead of taking the instruction. For which roles across all sectors are capped this year, see our guide to Irish employment permit quotas in 2026.

Why Overseas Drivers Work for Irish Operators

One constraint shapes this more than nationality or experience does, and it is worth stating before the sales points. A driver’s licence has to be a category CE or C1E issued in Ireland or the EEA, or one from a jurisdiction that holds a mutual recognition agreement with the Road Safety Authority. DETE currently lists five such countries: South Africa, Australia, Japan, Georgia and South Korea. The Philippines is not among them, so while CA Recruitment is Filipino-Irish owned and places Filipino workers across most of the sectors we serve, our driver sourcing runs on the recognised-licence pool — including non-EEA nationals already holding a recognised licence from working in the EU or UK. We check the licence before we send you a CV, because nothing else about the candidate matters if that fails.

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