Ireland: Significant Changes To Irish Employment Permit System Effective From 17 January 2024

On 22 December 2023, new legislation was enacted to implement significant changes to the Irish Employment Permit system.

Key Changes

The key changes are:

• The minimum annual and hourly remuneration thresholds for most new employment permits will increase with effect from 17 January 2024.

• A high-level summary of the initial remuneration threshold changes are set out in the table below.

• Other changes impacting employers are:
  • The addition of 11 new occupations to the Critical Skills Occupations List (including Special Engineer roles and Commercial Manager roles), which lowers the monetary threshold needed to obtain a Critical Skills Employment Permit for these roles;
  • The removal of 32 occupations from the Ineligible Occupations List, making them eligible for a General Employment Permit (including roles such as mechanics, technicians, disability services workers and certain machine operatives).

• The Government has also indicated its intention to make further changes to minimum annual remuneration thresholds in 2025 and 2026.

Employers who engage non-EU/EEA/Swiss staff members should be considering the potential cost and related implications for their 2024 and 2025 recruitment plans.

The changes followed a public consultation on the review of the Employment Permits Occupations Lists which opened in June 2023. The Outcome of that review was published on 20 December 2023 (available here), together with an announcement of the Government's intention to make further changes over the period 2024 – 2026 (available here), with the legislation to implement the 2024 changes published two days later.

This article contains a general summary of developments and is not a complete or definitive statement of the law. Specific legal advice should be obtained where appropriate.