Ireland General Employment Permit
An Irish job offer, 36,605 euros, and 28 days of advertising
The General Employment Permit is how Americans take an ordinary Irish job. Here's the 2026 pay floor, the list that can block you, and what it costs in time.
This is the permit for work Ireland needs but hasn't labeled critical: care homes, kitchens, garages, building sites, food plants. The pay floor is lower than the critical skills route. Almost everything else about it is slower.
Before anything else
One list can end this before the salary matters
Ireland keeps an Ineligible List of Occupations, and it's the first gate. If your job sits on it, no employer and no salary gets you a permit. Retail assistants, cashiers, receptionists, secretaries, office managers, bookkeepers, bar staff and waiting staff are all on it, and even the high-salary critical skills route explicitly excludes anything on the list.
The list works on the state's occupation codes, not on what your offer letter calls you. A kitchen porter can't be sponsored. A commis chef with real cooking duties can. Same kitchen, different code. The useful first move is to send your actual duties to the employer's HR team and have them check the code, not the title.
The list does move. Five jobs came off it entirely in May 2026, among them pharmaceutical technicians, dental technicians and forestry workers. Narrower exceptions opened for several construction trades.
- Check the live list before your employer writes the job ad. A role that was blocked last year may be open now.
- If the code is blocked, restructuring the job is the only real workaround, and the duties have to be genuine.
- Every other job in the Irish labor market that isn't on the list is fair game for this permit.
The pay floors, and the fee
36,605 euros
The standard salary floor since 1 March 2026, up 7.66 percent from 34,000 euros.
About $42,100 a year.
32,691 euros
The reduced floor for healthcare assistants, home carers, horticulture and meat processing roles.
Hourly rate can't dip under 16.12 euros.
34,009 euros
What a graduate of an Irish college can be hired at, within a year of finishing a level 8 or higher course.
About $39,100 a year.
1,000 euros
The application fee for a permit of up to two years. A permit of six months or less costs 500 euros.
A refusal gets you nine tenths back.
The month nobody warns you about
Your job has to be advertised for 28 days first
Before the application can be filed, your employer has to run a labor market needs test: the vacancy goes up on Jobs Ireland and the EU's EURES network for 28 continuous days, and on a second online platform for another 28 days. Print ads stopped being required in 2024. The notice has to name the employer, job, location, weekly hours and theannual salary, and it can't be edited or extended once it's live. The permit application has to land within 90 days of the day the ad first went up.
Some hires skip the test: jobs on the critical skills list, hires recommended by Enterprise Ireland or IDA Ireland, former permitholders who were made redundant, a carer whose patient already depends on them, and, per Citizens Information, a job paying over 64,000 euros. Moving employers later needs no new test either.
- The salary in the ad and the salary on the application have to match exactly. A gap is a refusal.
- The 28 days run before the file is submitted, so a good employer starts advertising the day they start interviewing.
- At least half the employer's staff must be EEA nationals on the day they apply. That rule catches small firms that already hired abroad.
General Employment Permit
For occupations not on the Critical Skills list. Requires a job offer, employer sponsorship, and often a labor market needs test to show no suitable EU/EEA candidate is available.
- Government cost
- $1,000
- Processing time
- ~30 days
- Timeline
- 2 years (renewable)
- Difficulty
- Moderate
Key requirements
- Job offer
- Employer sponsorship
- Labor market needs test (unless exempt)
- Register with Irish immigration after arrival
About that data card
A couple of footnotes on that card. The fee is in euros, not dollars: 1,000 euros is roughly $1,150, and it drops to 500 euros for a permit of six months or less. And 30 days is the hopeful version. In September 2026, the department was deciding new General Employment Permit files received in August, about five weeks back. Renewals from June sit closer to twelve weeks. We converted every dollar figure here at roughly $1.15 per euro, the rate in the second week of September 2026, so re-run it on the day you sign.
The trade-offs
What this permit doesn't hand you
Your family waits a year
Spouses, partners and dependent children can only apply once 12 months have passed since your permit issued, and you have to show income for the size of your family. The good news is what happens after they land: since May 2024 a spouse or partner gets a Stamp 1G and can take a job anywhere, no permit of their own needed, and since late 2025 dependent children get that right at 16. Critical skills families skip the waiting year entirely.
Stamp 4 is 57 months out
Work 57 months on this permit and you can ask immigration for Stamp 4, which drops the permit requirement. The critical skills equivalent is 21 months. Your first permit runs up to two years, renews up to three, and every renewal is judged against the floor of the day, so a contract written at exactly the minimum can fail later.
The floor is not a Dublin wage
At 36,605 euros, Daft.ie's second-quarter 2026 average Dublin two-bed rent of 2,634 euros a month works out at 31,608 euros a year, about 86 percent of your gross pay. Ireland's 40 percent income tax band opens above 44,000 euros if you're single, with the Universal Social Charge and PRSI stacked on top, and April still means a US return.
How the occupation lists moved in 2026
Hospitality managers
A quota of 292 permits filled on April 2026, and files still waiting in the queue were rejected.
Motor mechanics
A 200 permit quota ran out in March, then reopened at 1,000 permits in the May regulations.
Meat processing
The department said on August 26, 2026 that the quota was oversubscribed and asked people to stop applying.
Care workers and home carers
The largest quota in the 2026 regulations, at 1,495 permits, on the reduced salary floor.
Fish filleters and seafood
Newly eligible in May 2026 and capped at 50 and 100 permits, with a fresh advertising test required.
Construction trades
Steel fixing, fencing, curtain walling and concrete pumping came off the blocked list, with no quota attached.
Who to call when your employer hasn't done this before
Plan-B Outbound Migration
Multi-Country Visa Support
Visa support across several countries, Ireland included. Useful when a small Irish employer is running their first advertising test and nobody in the building has filed one of these.
Moneycorp
Currency Exchange
Currency and international payments. Your salary arrives in euros while your student loan, car payment or mortgage stays in dollars, and the spread on those transfers adds up fast.
Beacon Global Advisors
Financial Planning
Financial planning for Americans abroad. Moving to an Irish payroll raises real questions about a 401k, an IRA and which U.S. brokerages will still keep you as a client.
Questions people actually ask
Does a General Employment Permit lead to permanent residency?
It leads to Stamp 4 after 57 months of permit work, which lets you work here without a permit and change jobs freely. Irish citizenship by naturalization needs five years of reckonable residence. Neither step is automatic: both are applications you have to qualify for.
How is this different from a Critical Skills Employment Permit?
The critical skills permit is for jobs on Ireland's shortage list. It needs no job advertising, lets your family come immediately, and reaches Stamp 4 in 21 months. The general permit covers jobs that aren't on that list, but it needs 28 days of advertising, your family waits a year, and Stamp 4 takes 57 months.
I'm a US citizen. Do I need an Irish visa as well as the permit?
No entry visa is needed on a US passport. Once the permit is granted you fly over with that passport and the permit letter. You do have to register with immigration inside 90 days of landing. That costs 300 euros, about $345, and produces the residence card showing your Stamp 1 permission.
How long does a General Employment Permit take?
The decision queue is public. On 11 September 2026 the department was working through applications filed on 6 August, about five weeks. Add the 28 days of advertising before it and registration after you land, and practitioners put a full hire at six to eight months.
Can my spouse come with me, and can they work?
Your spouse or partner and any dependent children can apply once 12 months have passed since the permit was issued, and you'll need to meet income limits for your family size. Once they have permission to live here, a spouse or partner is issued a Stamp 1G, so they can be hired anywhere in Ireland without applying for anything themselves.
Can I change jobs on this permit?
Yes, after nine months with the employer who sponsored you, and the new job has to be in the same profession. No new advertising test is needed, you can make up to three change-of-employer applications, and you can't start until the permit is reissued. Laid off instead? Notify the department inside four weeks, and you then have six months to line up another job.
What is the minimum salary for Ireland's General Employment Permit in 2026?
The standard floor has been 36,605 euros a year, about $42,100, since 1 March 2026. Healthcare assistants, home carers, horticulture workers and meat processing operatives can be hired at 32,691 euros, and a recent graduate of an Irish college at 34,009 euros. Only basic pay counts toward it.
Is Ireland even the right country for this job?
The Expatsi Test scores countries against what you need from a paycheck, a health system and a place to live.
Why not you?