The General Employment Permit: Ireland's standard work permit route

The General Employment Permit is the broad route into Irish employment for a non-EEA national. It replaced the old Work Permit Employment Permit, which is why people still search for it as the general work permit, and the Department describes it as the primary vehicle the State uses to fill occupations short of labour or skills.

It works the opposite way round to the Critical Skills route. Critical Skills names the occupations that qualify. This route assumes every occupation qualifies unless it appears on the Ineligible List of Occupations, and that is why it reaches a far broader range of roles than any other permit class. Occupations on the Critical Skills Occupations List are eligible on this route as well.

The trade for that breadth is the Labour Market Needs Test. Because the occupation is not treated as being in shortage by default, the employer usually has to advertise the vacancy to the domestic and EEA market before the application is made. This is also the route that can be used for a contract as short as 12 months, where the Critical Skills route needs a job offer running at least two years.

The permit names the employer, the person, the occupation and the location. It is issued to the foreign national with a certified copy to the employer, and the pay, role and location recorded on it have to be the job actually being done.

A permit will not issue unless at least 50 per cent of the employees in the firm are EEA nationals at the time the application is made. It is an employer level condition rather than anything about the individual being hired, and it catches small companies far more often than large ones.

Two waivers exist. The first is for start-ups. The employer has to have been registered with Revenue as an employer within the last two years and hold a letter of support from Enterprise Ireland or IDA Ireland, which confines it to their client companies. The ratio is expected to be met by the time a renewal is made; where it is not, a one year permit may be granted if the employer can show significant progress toward 50 per cent and produces a further letter of support, and the ratio has to be reached by the end of that year.

The second waiver covers the sole employee case. Where the employer has no employees on the day the application is made and the person named will be the only one, the rule does not defeat the application. It keeps applying at renewal for as long as that person remains the sole employee.

A first time permit holder is expected to stay with the initial employer for nine months. Section 18 of the Employment Permits Regulations 2024 provides that a permit for a different employer cannot be considered where fewer than nine months have elapsed since the person first commenced employment in the State on an employment permit.

The Department may allow a move inside that window in three published situations: medical doctors on six month rotations, a permit holder who has been made redundant, and circumstances unforeseen at the time of application that fundamentally change the employment relationship. After nine months a move is open, but it means a fresh application assessed on the normal criteria rather than a transfer of the permit already held.

A redundancy runs on its own clock. The Employment Permits Section has to be notified on the prescribed form within four weeks of the date of dismissal, and the person then has up to six months from that date to find other work. Where the job title has since stopped being eligible, an application for the same title will still be considered and the Labour Market Needs Test will not be required. Beyond six months without a job offer, the immigration authorities decide what permission remains.

Spouses, dependants and partners of General Employment Permit holders are not eligible for a Dependant Employment Permit and have to apply for an employment permit in their own right. Family reunification itself is decided separately by the Department of Justice. This is the widest gap between the two main routes, and the comparison page sets them side by side.

The permit is not a residence permission. Someone holding one still has to register their immigration permission to be lawfully resident in the State, and that permission should be renewed at least a month before it expires. Delay in registering can affect a later application for long term residency or citizenship.

The Department's guidance points two ways at the five year mark, and both are worth knowing. It says a holder would then apply to the Department of Justice for long term residency. It also says a non-EEA national who has held valid General Employment Permits for five or more consecutive years and worked lawfully throughout may not require a permit at all, and should contact the Department of Justice about a temporary Stamp 4. Where neither applies, renewal remains open: five or more years of continuous employment with the same employer allows a renewal of unlimited duration with no fee, and otherwise a renewal runs up to three years at the normal fee.