Care Work in Ireland: The General Employment Permit Route (2026)

The route that is actually open

With the UK closed to overseas care worker recruitment since July 2025, Ireland is one of the few English-speaking countries still issuing permits for care assistants and home carers. It does so through the General Employment Permit, under a government quota specifically for care work.

The essentials: you need a job offer from an Irish employer, the employer must run a labour market needs test first, the salary must meet the threshold set for care roles, and a permit must be available under the quota when the application is lodged. Your employer, not you, applies for the permit.

Salary threshold and the quota

Care work sits in a lower salary band than most General Employment Permit roles. From March 2026 the minimum for healthcare assistants and home carers is €32,691 a year — equivalent to about €16.12 an hour over a 39-hour week — against roughly €36,500 for standard General Employment Permit occupations. The qualifying figure is basic pay: overtime, shift premiums and bonuses do not count towards it.

The quota is the part to watch. The Department of Enterprise sets a fixed number of care worker permits, issued first come, first served, and has topped the quota up more than once as it filled. Permits are not available continuously, so timing matters — if the quota is closed when your employer applies, the application waits for the next allocation.

Qualifications and experience

There is no licensing body for care assistants in Ireland — no registration equivalent to NMBI or CORU. What employers look for instead is the QQI Level 5 in Healthcare Support, or an overseas qualification and experience they assess as equivalent. Many employers will sponsor a worker who has relevant experience and expects to complete QQI modules after arriving; others treat the qualification as a condition of the offer.

There is no formal English test for the General Employment Permit itself, but employers assess English at interview, and care work is a communication job before it is anything else. Garda vetting — Ireland's police check — is arranged by your employer once you are in the country.

What the permit gives you

• An initial permit of up to two years, tied to that employer and that role, renewable.
• Family reunification after 12 months, rather than immediately as on the Critical Skills permit.
• Stamp 4 after five years of permit-based residence — unrestricted permission to work for any employer, which is the point at which the job stops constraining your life.
• Irish employment law protections: minimum annual leave, public holidays, and the statutory notice and dismissal rules that apply to everyone.

Two constraints worth being honest about. The permit ties you to one employer, and changing employer generally requires a new permit. And the five-year wait for Stamp 4 is considerably longer than the two years a nurse on a Critical Skills permit faces — a real consideration if your longer-term plan is to qualify as a nurse in Ireland.

If Ireland does not work out

Australia is the other open door for care workers, through the Aged Care Industry Labour Agreement, which allows approved providers to sponsor direct care workers with an English requirement well below the skilled-visa standard and a recognised route to permanent residence. Our ACILA guide and our care worker visa guide cover it. The UK remains closed to new overseas care worker sponsorship, so treat any offer suggesting otherwise with real suspicion.

Frequently asked questions