Irish employment permit salary thresholds from 1 March 2026: what changed, and what it means

If you are planning to work in Ireland on an employment permit, or planning to hire someone who needs one, the numbers changed on 1 March 2026. A lot of published guidance — including, until recently, parts of our own website — still shows the old figures. Here is the current position, where it came from, and what it actually changes.

The new minimums

Every employment permit route has a minimum annual salary the job must pay. These are the figures in force from 1 March 2026.

• General Employment Permit — €36,605. Previously €34,000.

• Critical Skills Employment Permit — €40,904. Previously €38,000.

• Care workers, home carers, horticulture and meat-processing roles — €32,691, equivalent to €16.12 an hour. Previously €30,000.

• General Employment Permit, recent graduate of an Irish third-level institution — €34,009.

• Critical Skills, recent graduate — €36,848.

• Labour Market Needs Test exemption — €68,911. Above this, the employer does not have to run the advertising test.

Both of the main routes rose by 7.66%. That was actually a reduction on what had been planned: the original roadmap proposed increases of 14.7% and 15.8% respectively, and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment moderated them.

If you are a candidate

The practical effect is that the bar moved by €2,600 to €2,900 depending on your route, and the job offer is what has to clear it — not your experience, not your qualifications, and not what you would accept.

This is the single most common reason an application never gets started. A candidate is genuinely qualified, genuinely wants the role, and the employer genuinely wants to hire them, and the salary on the table is €33,000. There is no route at €33,000 for a General Employment Permit, and no amount of paperwork changes that.

So the first question to settle is not "am I qualified" but "does the offer clear the threshold for the route that fits this role". Settle it before you spend money on anything.

If you are an employer

Three things follow from the increase.

Your existing salary bands may no longer work. A role you successfully sponsored in 2024 at €34,000 does not qualify today. If you are budgeting a hire for later this year, budget against €36,605, not against what you paid last time.

The Labour Market Needs Test still applies to most General Employment Permit hires. That means advertising the role for at least 28 consecutive days on JobsIreland.ie and the EURES portal plus one additional commercial job board, documenting every application received, and being able to explain why no EEA candidate was suitable. It is a paperwork exercise, but it is the paperwork that decides whether the permit is granted.

The 50/50 rule has not gone away. At least half of your workforce must be EEA, Swiss or UK nationals. For a small independent business this can bite before the salary threshold does, and it is worth checking your own ratio before you start a process rather than after.

The chef-specific trap

Three chef grades are eligible for a General Employment Permit: Head Chef and Sous Chef, each requiring at least five years of verifiable experience, and Chef de Partie, requiring at least two. There is no annual quota on chef permits, which makes them look like the easiest hospitality route.

In practice two conditions catch people out.

The €36,605 must be basic pay. Tips and service charge do not count towards it. A role paying €31,000 basic plus an expected €6,000 in tips does not meet the threshold, however much the person actually takes home. This is, in our experience, the most common reason a chef case fails before it starts.

And the role cannot be in a fast-food outlet.

The part most people miss

Alongside the two headline routes there is a lower salary band at €32,691 — €16.12 an hour — covering care workers, home carers, horticulture and meat-processing roles.

That is €3,914 below the standard General Employment Permit threshold, and it matters more than the gap suggests, because it brings a whole set of employers into range who cannot clear €36,605.

The occupation lists revised on 28 May 2026 made 1,000 permits available for Care Worker and Home Carer roles, and 200 for Support Worker roles. For comparison, the hospitality management categories carry much smaller quotas: 200 for Restaurant and Catering Managers, 100 for Hotel and Accommodation Managers, and 50 for Catering and Bar Managers.

Ireland issued over 12,000 employment permits in 2025. India was the leading country of origin, and healthcare and social work was the largest receiving sector. If you are looking at where Irish permits are actually being granted, that is the answer.

What is coming

The 1 March 2026 increase is not a one-off. It came from a roadmap published in December 2025 that phases further increases through to 2030. The care and food-processing band is scheduled to rise by around 9% a year over that period. The later years are marked as subject to annual review and indexation against national average earnings, so the direction is settled and the exact amounts are not.

The practical consequence: if you are planning a hire or a move more than a few months out, plan against a higher number than today’s, and check the figure again before you commit to anything.

Some roles are not available at all

It is worth saying plainly, because a lot of people are told otherwise. Several hospitality roles are on Ireland’s ineligible occupations list and cannot be filled through an employment permit at any salary. These include waiting and bar staff, kitchen porters, and cleaning roles. If someone is offering you a route into one of those, they are not being straight with you.

Checking this yourself

Every figure above comes from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, which publishes the current thresholds and the occupation lists directly. Salary thresholds are set by the Department, not by employers or agencies, and they are the authoritative source.

These figures were last checked on 5 September 2026. Because they are scheduled to change annually, anything you read on this subject — here or anywhere else — should carry a date. If you find an error on this page, tell us and we will correct it.

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Chef Overseas recruits chefs, hospitality and care professionals from India for employers in Ireland, and manages the employment permit process. We assess eligibility against the current published rules before taking any fee, and we will tell you plainly if a route does not exist for your situation.

This article is general information about published rules, not immigration advice, and it does not create any expectation of a particular outcome. Permit decisions are made by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and visa decisions by the Department of Justice. Your own circumstances should be assessed individually.