Manufacturing Recruitment Agency Ireland
Production staff placed, work permits managed

Manufacturing Labour in Ireland

Ireland's manufacturing sector — food production, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and general manufacturing — has been short of production-floor and maintenance staff for years. Shifts get covered by agency staff, overtime, or not at all.

The permit route does not fix all of that, and this page is going to be specific about which parts it fixes. CA Recruitment works as a manufacturing recruitment agency on the one route domestic agencies do not run: sourcing workers from outside the EEA and carrying the DETE employment permit application end to end. The roles that qualify are narrower than most employers expect, so the eligibility check comes first and comes free.

What a Manufacturing Recruitment Agency Does for a Permit Hire

Most manufacturing recruitment agencies in Ireland do one job well: they find people who already live here with the right to work, and put them in front of you. If your problem is next month's roster, that is the correct service and you should use it.

A permit hire is different work. The candidate 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 placement.

• The eligibility check, before anything else. We match the vacancy to its SOC occupation code and check it against DETE's current Ineligible List of Occupations, its salary threshold and any quota. This is where most manufacturing enquiries stop, and we would rather stop them here than after you have paid for advertising. Ours, and free.
• Sourcing and vetting overseas. Shortlisting against your plant — the machinery, the process, the shift pattern, the hygiene or cleanroom standard, and the certifications the role actually needs. 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 a General Employment Permit 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 worker from their home country once the permit issues, with our coordination on documents and appointments. Ours and the worker'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. Ours; you provide the contract, the induction and the training.

That middle block is the whole difference. An agency placing an EEA-resident operative 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 sector mechanics are in our guide to hiring manufacturing workers from overseas.

Who we actually place — and who we do not

Worth saying plainly, because several agencies competing for this work are pitched at life-science and engineering professionals: validation leads, QA managers, process engineers on six-figure packages. That is not our business. CA Recruitment places production, processing and skilled-trade staff on employment permits — the roles that keep a line running.

There is a harder version of the same honesty, and it is the one that costs us work. If your gap is general production or assembly operatives, the permit route does not solve it — and no agency, ours included, can make it solve it. The whole process- and machine-operative family sits on DETE's Ineligible List of Occupations, and so do assemblers, routine inspectors and testers, packers, bottlers, canners and fillers, and other elementary process plant occupations. DETE will not grant a permit for those roles however the candidate is qualified. An agency that takes your instruction for a general 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: DETE's Ineligible List of Occupations rules out most of a factory floor. Food, drink and tobacco process operatives, glass and ceramics, chemical, rubber, plastics and metal-making process operatives, metal working machine operatives, paper machine operatives, printing machine assistants and other plant and machine operatives (SOC 8111–8112 and 8114–8129) are all ineligible — as are assemblers of electrical, electronic, vehicle and metal goods, routine inspectors and testers (8131 to 8139), packers, bottlers, canners and fillers (9134), industrial cleaning process occupations (9132) and other elementary process plant occupations (9139). Those roles cannot be sponsored, whatever the candidate's experience.

Three named exceptions run through that block and they are where the manufacturing permit route actually lives: Computer Numerical Control Operative is carved out of almost every 81xx process and machine operative code, and Meat Processor Operative and Seafood Operative are carved out of food, drink and tobacco process operatives specifically. Alongside those sit the skilled trades and technical roles that are not on the list at all. We confirm your specific vacancy against the current list before anything starts.

General Employment Permit (GEP)

Meat processor operative is eligible at the reduced €32,691 a year and €16.12 an hour threshold, both of which must be met — but DETE's notice of 26 August 2026 says the 1,000-permit quota set by S.I. 643/2025 is oversubscribed and asks employers not to submit new applications for the role at this time. Applications still in the queue when a quota fills are rejected. We read the current position off DETE's live notices before a Labour Market Needs Test starts.

Critical Skills Employment Permit (CSEP)

Where a plant needs a graduate-level engineer or scientist rather than a line role, the Critical Skills route applies and there is no 28-day Labour Market Needs Test. It is a smaller part of what we do — a specialist life-science search firm may serve you better for a senior technical hire — but the permit mechanics are the same and we run them.

The Permit Process

• 1

  Free Consultation

  We assess the role and your current workforce to confirm eligibility. 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 arrival and the first 90 days.

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

Every agency you talk to will quote you a fee. Only the ones running permits have to tell you what happens when a government department says no, so here are 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 worker 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. A Critical Skills Employment Permit has no Labour Market Needs Test, so this cost does not arise on that route.
• The worker’s visa, travel, medical and relocation costs.

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 worker 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 worker’s first day of employment with you.

Two limits worth reading before you rely on it. First, it covers our fee only — the replacement worker 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 worker 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. In manufacturing there are three separate ways an application can fail before anyone looks at the candidate: the occupation is on the Ineligible List, the salary does not meet the threshold that applies to that occupation, or the 50:50 workforce rule is not satisfied. A fourth applies to meat processor operative specifically, where a quota is nearly full and DETE has asked employers to hold off. We check all of them 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 Manufacturing Workers Work for Irish Plants

What Irish Employers Say

Frequently Asked Questions