Care work in Ireland, from Nigeria

This guide is for a Nigerian who has worked as a care assistant, a caregiver, an auxiliary nurse or a nursing assistant, who wants a paid care job in Ireland on a work permit, and who has never done any of this before. It takes you from the papers you hold in Nigeria to your first Irish payslip in eight stages. You get your papers ready, find an employer that will apply for your permit, and check the offer and sign the contract. Your employer advertises the job and applies for your permit. Then you get your visa, travel, settle in during your first weeks, and read your first payslip. A ninth stage covers the years after: the nine months with your first employer, the Level 5 care certificate, renewing your permit, your family, and the stamp that lets you work in any job without a permit (Stamp 4). Each stage says what you have just done, what you do now, where, what you need, what it costs, how long it takes and how you know you are done. Start with "Where it stands today". Then read Part 1 once from top to bottom, and come back to the stage you are on. Every fee, date and rule comes from the official page that sets it, or is given in the named body's own words. The guide's date is 14 October 2026: every "open" and "today" in it is counted on that day. Where a line says what people "wrote online" or what a survey found, it is what people who made this journey report, not a rule.

Where it stands today

The permit is open today. The work permit for this job is called the General Employment Permit. Its page, on the website of the Irish Government department that gives work permits (the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment), reads: "In the case of employment as a Horticulture worker, Meat Processor Operative, Health Care Assistant (HCA) & Home Support Worker (SOC 6145) the minimum annual remuneration is €32,691 and in respect of which the minimum hourly rate of remuneration €16.12". That is about ₦48.9 million a year (about €2,311 a month in your hand, Stage 8), or about ₦24,132 an hour. "Either the foreign national or the prospective employer can apply for a General Employment Permit", so you can be given one while you still live in Nigeria.

On 14 October 2026, the guide's date:

• The job code your employer uses matters for the cap on permits. Ireland sorts jobs by number codes (SOC codes), and some codes have a cap on how many permits are given (a quota). The Minister's written answer to Ireland's parliament (the Dáil) of 10 April 2025 says: "Health Care Assistants are not subject to a quota. Care workers and Home Carers are subject to a shared quota." But the Department's permit page puts health care assistants under SOC 6145, the care workers' code. The answer of 27 January 2026 puts nursing home health care assistants under SOC 6141. No official page says which job titles count against the cap. Ask the employer which code it will enter (Stage 3, question 2).
• Care workers and home carers share a cap of 1,495 permits, counted from 13 May 2026. The Department's notices page carries no "quota filled" notice for them today.
• The rule on half the staff (the 50:50 rule) is in force. "An employment permit will not issue unless at the time of application at least 50% of the employees in a firm are EEA nationals." EEA nationals are citizens of the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, and the permit counts Irish, British and Swiss staff with them. On 28 May 2026 the Government approved "preparations to amend" the rule. It said that for health care assistants in nursing homes, disability care and home care "flexibility within the 50:50 rule is required". No official page says the change has been made. Today the rule stands as written.
• The permit queue. On 19 October 2026 the Department was working on new work permit applications it received on 14 September 2026: about five weeks before an officer opens one.
• The lowest pay allowed changes from January 2027. The lowest pay the permit allows (the pay floor) for health care assistants and home carers changes from January 2027; the figure is not yet published. If your employer will apply on or after 1 January 2027, ask in writing that your basic pay meets the floor in force on the day it applies.
• Who takes these permits. In 2025 Ireland gave 1,327 new permits to health care assistants and 757 to care workers and home carers. Nigerians received 726 employment permits of every kind in 2025, and 624 from January to September 2026.

Two care jobs get no permit, and one employer will not apply for yours. A senior carer, a senior care assistant or a team leader in a nursing home (the code SOC 6146) is on the list of jobs that get no permit (the Ineligible Occupations List), "with the exception of those working in disability services". A care job with a private family in its own home is on the same list ("Work in the private home", "Domestic worker"). There are two narrow cases for a carer who already cares for that person (Part 1). And the HSE, Ireland's public health service, will not apply for your permit for a permanent job. For permanent jobs it applies only for jobs on the list of jobs Ireland is short of (the Critical Skills Occupations List), and health care assistants are not on it. Your employer is a private nursing home, a disability service, or a home care company.

What decides when you start is the employer. Many Irish care adverts online in 2026 read "EU APPLICANTS ONLY" or "unable to provide visa sponsorship". The employers that will apply for your permit (that sponsor you) are fewer. Stage 2 shows you how to find them and how to tell them apart. Count your time from the day an employer says yes: up to 28 days for the employer's job advert, about five weeks in the permit queue before an officer opens your application, then the visa. The Irish Immigration Service's page gives the work visa (the employment visa) "approximately 8 weeks", and the Embassy in Abuja recommends applying twelve weeks before you travel. One employment visa applicant wrote online in September 2025 that theirs had no answer after 16 weeks, and another was still waiting after about six months in 2026. To your flight, plan on about four months from the yes by the official pages, about six months or more by the 2025 and 2026 reports, and keep your job in Nigeria until the visa is in your passport.

Part 1. Before you start

What this job is

The job is care of older people, or of people with disabilities, in a nursing home, a disability service or their own homes. Ireland's permit system sorts jobs by the UK's number codes (the SOC 2010 job codes). Code 6145 is care workers and home carers: they "attend to the personal needs and comforts of the elderly and the infirm with care and support needs ('service users') within residential care establishments, day care establishments or in their own homes". Its job titles include "Care assistant", "Care worker", "Carer", "Home care assistant", "Home carer" and "Support worker (nursing home)". Code 6141 is nursing auxiliaries and assistants, with titles that include "Health care assistant (hospital service)" and "Health care support worker".

The two official records put a health care assistant under different codes. The work permit page prints "Health Care Assistant (HCA) & Home Support Worker (SOC 6145)". The Minister's written answer to Ireland's parliament (the Dáil) of 27 January 2026 counts "nursing home HCAs (SOC 6141) and Care Workers (SOC 6145)" separately. The answer of 10 April 2025 says: "Health Care Assistants are not subject to a quota. Care workers and Home Carers are subject to a shared quota." The cap of 1,495 permits (the quota) is set for code 6145, and the employer enters the code on the application. Ask the employer, in writing, which job code (SOC code) it will enter for your job (Stage 3, question 2).

The bodies you will deal with

The Irish Government department that gives work permits is the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment (the Department in this guide). It gives the work permit for this job (the General Employment Permit). The permit is applied for on the Department's online permit site (Employment Permits Online), which opened on 28 April 2025.

The Irish Immigration Service, part of the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, decides your visa through the Embassy of Ireland in Abuja. It also registers you once you arrive. At registration it gives you your residence card (the Irish Residence Permit, or IRP card), and the stamp on it is your permission to stay. Your first permission stamp (Stamp 1) lets you work on a work permit. Years later, another stamp (Stamp 4) lets you work in any job without a permit (Stage 9 has when).

VFS Global runs the visa centres in Nigeria where you hand in your visa papers and give your fingerprints (the visa application centres, called VFS centres in this guide). Choose the nearest one, and count the trip in your costs.

Ireland's qualifications body is QQI (Quality and Qualifications Ireland). It sets the levels of Irish certificates. When your permit is renewed, the permit rules (the Employment Permits Regulations 2024, as first made) ask for a "relevant Level 5 Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) qualification". For a care worker or home carer they ask for one "in health and social care, or an equivalent qualification". So the care certificate level the renewal asks for is QQI Level 5 (the Level 5 certificate in this guide). Healthcare Support (5M4339) is one such award: the State's further education colleges list 14 courses for it. Inside QQI, an office that compares foreign certificates (NARIC Ireland) gives a free letter that says what your certificate equals in Ireland (a comparability statement, called your comparison letter in this guide).

Ireland's Government job site is JobsIreland, run by its public employment service. Every job an employer advertises for a work permit runs there for 28 days.

Ireland's office for work rights is the Workplace Relations Commission (the WRC). It licenses Irish job agencies (employment agencies) and hears complaints about pay, hours and breaks. HIQA, the Health Information and Quality Authority, registers and inspects nursing homes. The National Vetting Bureau runs the Irish police check (Garda vetting). Every nursing home must hold it for each staff member (the nursing home regulations of 2013, as first made).

In Nigeria: the Nigeria Immigration Service (your passport), the Nigeria Police Force (your Police Character Certificate), and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, which licenses recruiters and lists the registered ones.

What the permit asks of you and of your employer

The pay. At least €32,691 a year (about ₦48.9 million) for 39 hours a week, which is €16.12 an hour (about ₦24,132). The Department's checklist for health care assistants: "A 40-hour week must have a minimum salary of 33,529.60" (about ₦50.2 million). What counts is basic pay, your pay before any extras. The checklist: "Salary refers solely to basic pay but may include Premium Payments" where those extra payments (premium payments) are fixed and certain, and "Salary shall not include any bonuses, shift allowances, overtime etc." The work permit page also counts as pay "Health insurance payments made to a health insurer registered with the Health Insurance Authority". For hours above 39, "every extra hour (or part of an hour) above 39 must be paid at least the minimum hourly rate". The Department's own review of 2025 says of these jobs: "In general, the median salary received by permit holders in these roles, is equal to the legal minimum." Plan your life on €32,691.

Your qualification for the first permit. The permit page asks that "the prospective employee must possess the relevant qualifications, skills or experience that are required for the employment". The health care assistant checklist asks you to "Confirm details of qualifications relevant to the role" and to give "Details of qualifications/skills/knowledge and experience". No page names a certificate a health care assistant must hold for the first permit. For care workers and home carers, the Department's notice of 16 December 2022 created their cap on permits, and it is now on its page of previous notices. It asked for "a minimum full QQI Level 5 qualification in health and social care or equivalent or successfully completed a full QQI Level 5 qualification (or higher qualification) in health and social care within 2 years of permit issue", and set "a 4-hour minimum continuous shift length". Today's checklist for care workers and home carers asks for neither. Citizens Information, the Government's information service, puts both jobs alike: a Level 5 QQI (or, for a health care assistant, "a relevant health and social care qualification comparable to a Level 5 QQI"), "or get one within 2 years of starting your job". So Citizens Information says you may get the Level 5 within two years of starting (Stage 9). None of the Department's pages says experience alone is enough: the Department decides on your application. Which certificate the employer accepts is the employer's call: NARIC Ireland says "decisions on recognising your qualification for employment, training or educational purposes will be made by the individual employer".

English. The permit and the visa ask for no English test. The permit page, both checklists and the employment visa page name none. Some employers set their own level in the advert. The Level 5 courses in Ireland ask for English at level B2 (upper-intermediate English) from learners whose first language is not English (Stage 9 has what to ask the college). Do not pay for an English test before an employer asks you for one. If anyone tells you this permit needs "IELTS 6.0", it is wrong: no official page asks for it.

The employer. "The issue of a General Employment Permit is contingent on a job offer from a bona fide employer registered with the Revenue Commissioners." That means you need a job offer from a real employer registered with Ireland's tax office (Revenue). The employer must first advertise the job for 28 days (the job advert the law asks for before a permit, called the Labour Market Needs Test, Stage 4). It must meet the 50:50 rule, and it must employ you directly: "there must be a direct employer/employee contract in place between the employer and non-EEA employee". An agency that places you with a nursing home cannot be the employer on your permit.

The money. The Department's work permit page: "Where the employer is the applicant, in accordance with section 55 of the Employment Permits Act 2024, the employer or an agent acting on their behalf may not make any deductions from the remuneration of, or seek to recover from, the holder of the employment permit concerned any charge, fee or expense related to the application." That means: when the employer applies, neither it nor its agent may take any permit charge, fee or cost from your pay, or ask you to pay it back. The Employment Permits Act 2024 as first passed (section 55), like the Employment Permits Act 2006 before it (section 23), also stops an employer from taking back from you the cost of "the recruitment of the holder" (recruiting you), or "any amount previously paid to the holder in respect of travelling expenses incurred by the holder in connection with taking up the employment in the State". The 2024 Act also stops it from keeping your personal documents. No page says who must pay your flight or your first rent: ask in writing (Stage 3, question 4). Your employer may not take back travel costs it paid you. If your employer books or pays your flight, get it in writing that you will never repay it, whenever you leave.

The first nine months. "If the foreign national is granted an employment permit for the first time in the State, then he / she is expected to stay with the initial employer for a period of 9 months." Choose your first employer as you would choose a place to live for nine months.

The option this guide walks: your employer applies

Either you or your employer can apply for the permit. This guide follows the employer applying, and you get the employer to agree to that at the offer (Stage 3).

When the employer applies, the fee is its own. The fee is €1,000 (about ₦1.50 million) for a permit of six to 24 months. The Department's fees page says "The fee for an employment permit must be paid by the applicant". Its permit page stops the employer from taking it back from you "Where the employer is the applicant" (The money, above). There is no fee where "the employer/connected person has charitable status confirmed by the Revenue Commissioners" (the Department's fees page, dated 22 March 2021). So a charity that employs you may pay no fee, and you pay none either. If you apply, the fee is charged on your application, and your employer may still pay it ("the fee may be paid by a third party"). Whoever applies, get it in writing from your employer that the fee will never be deducted from your pay or asked back from you. If you applied yourself and the permit is refused, 90% of the fee is refunded to you, whoever paid.

The employer holds what the application needs. The application needs the employer's statement from Ireland's tax office (its Revenue statement), its "Number of EEA and/or Swiss Nationals/UK nationals (including Irish)" and its "Number of non-EEA Nationals", the advert's JobsIreland reference number and the duties of the job. You give your own details and papers whoever applies (Stage 4).

On your own application (the other option): you open your own account on Employment Permits Online and name the employer and its contact person. The €1,000 is charged on your application (it asks for card details), whoever pays it. If the permit is refused, "90% of the fee will be refunded", and "the refund will still issue to the employee" even where the employer paid. Every other step is the same. Each stage below says "On your own application" where it differs.

What care workers report about money asked of them

The Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, a group that works for migrant workers, surveyed 1,019 work permit holders (General Employment Permit holders) between July 2025 and February 2026 (published March 2026); 45% of them were health care assistants. In its report, 31% of health care assistants had paid recruitment fees, and those who paid fees paid €5,476 on average ("The average amount paid was 5476 to both employers and agencies"; about ₦8.20 million). Workers quoted in it were made to repay their employer's €1,000 permit fee. Others were told they would pay €1,250 (about ₦1.87 million) if they left before the end of a three-year contract, or had €4,100 (about ₦6.14 million) taken for training at €50 a week. In November 2025 Ireland's work rights office (the WRC) heard care workers from Zimbabwe. They said they had paid €2,000 to €3,600 each (about ₦2.99 million to ₦5.39 million) to an Irish care company for permits and staff housing, and arrived to find the care home "had not opened". In June 2026 the EFCC arrested the chief executive of a Nigerian travel firm over ₦68.02 million it is alleged to have taken from 24 people for work visas, including visas "to Ireland and other countries" that complainants said were forged. Where your employer applied, it may not take back the permit fee (the Department's page); whoever applies, get it in writing that the fee will never be deducted. Your employer may not take back the cost of recruiting you or travel costs it paid you. The checks at Stage 3 catch the rest. You pay nobody for a job or a place. The only permit fee is the Department's, paid on its online permit site, and when your employer applies, the employer pays it.

Who this route fits

You fit best if you have worked as a care assistant, a caregiver, an auxiliary nurse or a nursing assistant for two years or more in a care home, a hospital, a home care service or a private home in Nigeria. You can prove it with letters and payslips, and you hold a health certificate. Adverts in 2026 from employers that will apply for a permit ask for "Min 2 years' experience" and "QQI Level 5 Major Award in Healthcare (or equivalent)", and some home care adverts ask for "a full Irish (or Irish recognised) Driving Licence".

You hold a health certificate from Nigeria. NARIC Ireland's list of foreign certificates (its database) compares these Nigerian awards with Irish levels: "Health Assistant / Community Health Worker / General Health Technician" (two to three years) with "An Award at Level 6"; "Health Assistant / General Health Technician" (one year) with "An Award at Level 5"; the National Diploma (ND) or OND with Level 6; the National Vocational Certificate Final (NVC) with Level 5; the WAEC or NECO Senior School Certificate with Ireland's end-of-school exam (the Leaving Certificate), Level 4 or 5. No Nigerian award named care assistant or nursing assistant is on the list. NARIC Ireland: "your qualification should be awarded by a nationally recognised awarding body in your country of origin". A short course from a private training centre may not be on the list: put it on your CV as training, and count on your experience. The comparison letter compares the level of the award, not whether it is a care award, and "a comparability statement only provides advice and is not a legal document". Download yours anyway (Stage 1): employers read it, and "Applicants may link the comparability statement for their qualification as part of the recruitment process." Do not pay for a new certificate in Nigeria (an agent's "UK Level 3 or Level 5 diploma") before an employer tells you in writing that it accepts it: the employer decides (Your qualification for the first permit, above).

Your certificate is from a UK awarding body, taken in Nigeria. Search NARIC Ireland for that award by name, and ask each employer before you apply whether it accepts it.

You have experience and no certificate. The first permit asks for "relevant qualifications, skills or experience", and the Department decides on your application (Your qualification for the first permit, above). Expect fewer employers to take you: the 2026 adverts from employers that apply for permits ask for a certificate or its equal.

You are a registered nurse in Nigeria. Take the nurse route, not this one. Registered nurses are on the list of jobs Ireland is short of (the Critical Skills Occupations List). They come in on that list's own permit (the Critical Skills Employment Permit). The HSE pays a staff nurse from €38,166 to €56,592 a year (about ₦57.1 million to ₦84.7 million) on its scale of 1 June 2026. Read the Ireland nurse guide, opens in a new tab.

You are offered a senior carer or team leader post. Outside disability services, that post (SOC 6146) gets no permit. Ask whether the employer has a health care assistant or care worker post. The duties on the application must be that job's duties.

A family in Ireland wants you to care for a relative at home. A private household can employ a carer on a permit only in two cases. The first is where the carer "is a qualified medical practitioner or nurse and is caring for a person with a severe medical condition in a domestic dwelling". The second is where "the carer has a long history of caring for the person concerned", the relationship "is a significant aspect of the quality of care being provided" and "there are no alternative care options". If neither is you, the job gets no permit.

You want home care. Home care companies hire on the same permit. Many of their adverts in 2026 ask for an Irish or Irish-recognised driving licence and a car. No official page says whether a Nigerian licence can be used in Ireland or swapped for an Irish one. Ask each home care employer before you apply whether it takes a Nigerian licence, and apply first to nursing homes, which ask for none. Ask whether your shifts are at least four hours unbroken (Stage 3, question 9).

You are married, or you have children. Your family cannot come with you. A work permit holder applies for family "after they have been legally working in Ireland for 1 year". Your spouse can apply to join you if your pay before tax (your gross income) was "in excess of €30,000 in the previous year" (about ₦44.9 million). This is shown by your "employment detail summaries from Revenue for the previous year" (the yearly record of your pay from Ireland's tax office). A full year at €32,691 is above that figure. If you started partway through that year, your Revenue summary may show less than €30,000 (ten months at the floor pay, from 1 March, is about €27,240). So ask the Irish Immigration Service which year it reads before your spouse applies. The Irish Immigration Service decides. For a child, your pay before tax must be higher than the page's figure: €50,200 for one child (about ₦75.1 million). The permit's pay is below it. The page says it plainly: "otherwise you will not be able to be joined by your children and you should be aware of this when deciding whether or not to come to Ireland." In the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland's survey of April 2026, 99% of work permit holders earned less than €50,200, and 51% had been apart from their children for three to five years. Decide this with your family before Stage 2 (Stage 9 has the family steps). Check now, too, that you hold a marriage certificate and your children's birth certificates that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can stamp as genuine. The family visa asks for these "attested/apostilled as genuine by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs". If your marriage was traditional (customary) only, or a child holds only a declaration of age, ask the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which papers it will attest.

The WHO's list. Nigeria is on the WHO's 2023 list of countries short of health workers (its health workforce support and safeguards list); the 2026 update is not published yet. The list covers "medical doctors, nursing personnel and midwifery personnel" only. Its own questions and answers say other jobs "have not been included", and that the list has "no provisions limiting the individual pursuit of employment opportunities in other countries". It does not stop a care assistant.

If you are also looking at nursing in Ireland or a service year in Germany

Nursing in Ireland. If you are a registered nurse, everything here is the wrong permit for you. Your route is the Ireland nurse guide, opens in a new tab, on the Critical Skills permit, with no 28-day advert and a higher salary. What carries over between the two: your passport, your Police Character Certificate, your bank statements and the Embassy's visa rules in Abuja are the same papers for both. The visa, the registration and your first weeks in Ireland (Stages 5 to 7 here) are the same steps.

A paid service year in Germany. The German service year guide, opens in a new tab puts you in a German care home, hospital or school as a volunteer for a year. It is not a job: "Der Bundesfreiwilligendienst ist als freiwilliges Engagement ein unentgeltlicher Dienst", unpaid service, with pocket money of at most 676 euros a month (about ₦1.01 million) and, at most hosts, a free room. It needs German, and it gives no right to stay after the year. Like this route, it costs you nothing to be placed: "Arranging a volunteer placement costs nothing! Never pay anyone in your home country who promises you a volunteer placement in Germany!" Nothing you do for one serves the other except your passport and your Police Character Certificate.

Check that you can start

Before you spend anything, check these six things:

• Your passport is valid for at least twelve months after the day you plan to arrive in Ireland. The visa asks it, and the permit asks at least 6 months. Count from the month you expect to fly, not from today: finding an employer has no fixed time, and the rest takes about four months or more. Renew before your employer applies for the permit (Stage 4), because the application carries your passport number. If your passport has less than about two years left, renew it now, in Nigeria.
• Your papers spell your name the same: your passport, your certificates, your letters and your bank account. If a certificate carries your maiden name, keep your marriage certificate with it. If your passport's data is wrong or out of date, a change of data takes 42 days and a correction costs ₦30,000 (Nigeria Immigration Service), so do it before your employer applies (Stage 4).
• You can prove your care work with letters from your employers and payslips or bank records of the salary. If a family employed you, or you were paid in cash, read Stage 1, Step 3 now.
• You can keep your job and your account while you wait. The visa asks six months of bank statements showing your money in and out, and the wait from an employer's yes to your flight is months.
• Your money. The fixed fees (Part 7), plus enough to live on until your first Irish pay: the HSE's guide puts the money to settle in "in the region of €4000" for its own staff (about ₦5.99 million). Ask each employer early whether it pays your flight, first housing and first rent, because that decides how much you need. Build the money up in your salary account over months, not as one deposit.
• Your family has decided with you that your children stay in Nigeria for now (Who this route fits, above).

Part 2. The whole journey on one page

Stage 1. Your papers. Your passport, your certificates, the free Irish letter that says what your certificate equals (your NARIC Ireland statement), your employers' letters and two written references, payslips, and six months of bank statements. The letter is free. A new passport is ₦100,000 and takes 42 days.

Stage 2. Find an employer that sponsors. Search JobsIreland, Ireland's Government job site, and the employers' own pages for nursing homes, disability services and home care companies that sponsor (that will apply for your permit); apply; have your interview by video. Free.

Stage 3. Check the offer and sign the contract. Check the employer, the agency and the job; ask your questions in writing; sign a contract at the permit's pay. Free. You pay nobody for a job or a place; the only permit fee is the Department's (Stage 4).

Stage 4. The advert and your permit. Your employer advertises the job for 28 days, if its advert has not already run. Then it applies for your work permit (the General Employment Permit) on the Department's online permit site (Employment Permits Online), at least 12 weeks before your start date. The €1,000 fee is the employer's. About five weeks in the queue on 19 October 2026, then the decision.

Stage 5. Your visa. Apply online, then hand in your papers and give your fingerprints at the visa centre (the VFS centre). ₦91,840 (€60), or ₦153,067 (€100) if the visa is issued for more than one entry (multi-entry), VFS's figures of 26 October 2026, plus VFS's service charge of ₦104,849 and your trip to the centre. About 8 weeks by the Irish Immigration Service's page; the Embassy recommends twelve weeks ahead.

Stage 6. Travel. Medical or travel insurance, your flight, and the landing stamp at the airport.

Stage 7. Your first weeks. Register and get your residence card (the IRP card) within 90 days (€300, about ₦449,100). Then your Irish tax number (the PPS number), your job on the online account of Ireland's tax office (Revenue's myAccount), a bank account, and the Irish police check (Garda vetting). In a nursing home you do training, not caring, until the police check is in (Nursing Homes Ireland, Stage 7). Then a doctor and a home.

Stage 8. Your first payslip. Your written terms, your hours, your breaks and your pay: on €32,691, about €2,311 a month in your hand (about ₦3.46 million) once income tax, two other charges on pay (USC and PRSI) and the pension come off.

Stage 9. The years after. Nine months with your first employer; the Level 5 care certificate within two years; renewing your permit at two years; your residence card each year; your family can apply after 12 months. Then the stamp that lets you work in any job without a permit (Stamp 4): 57 months on the Immigration Service's Stamp 4 page, five years on its stamps page and the Department's; plan on five.

The money. For you alone, with your employer applying: about ₦540,940 to ₦602,167 in fees (the visa, single or multi-entry, and your residence card). Add ₦100,000 if you need a new passport, VFS's service charge (₦104,849), the Police Character Certificate's fee if your employer asks for it, your flight and your first weeks in Ireland (Part 7). On your own application, add the €1,000 permit fee (about ₦1.50 million).

The time. Up to 28 days of advert, about five weeks in the permit queue, and about 8 weeks for the visa by the Irish Immigration Service's page (the Embassy recommends applying twelve weeks ahead). By the accounts of people who applied in 2025 and 2026, the visa takes 16 weeks or more. Your fixed limits are the 90 days of the advert, the 12 weeks between the permit application and your start, the six months to start once the permit is granted, and the 90 days to register once you land (Part 4).

Part 3. Stage by stage

Stage 1. Your papers

Back to the short stages

You have decided this route fits you. Now put your papers together, before you apply to any employer. An employer that likes your application will ask for them within days, and the nursing home must hold some of them on file for every staff member (the nursing home regulations of 2013, as first made).

Step 1. Your passport

Do. Check your passport's expiry date. You need it valid for at least twelve months after the day you plan to arrive in Ireland. Count from the month you expect to fly, not from today: finding an employer has no fixed time, and the rest takes about four months or more. Renew before your employer applies for the permit (Stage 4), because the application carries your passport number. If your passport has less than about two years left, renew it now, in Nigeria.

Where. The Nigeria Immigration Service's passport portal, passport.immigration.gov.ng, opens in a new tab, then your chosen passport office "for photograph and biometric data capturing".

What you need. For a first passport: your NIN slip, your birth certificate or a declaration of age from the High Court, your local government or indigene certificate, and a passport photograph.

Cost. ₦100,000 for 32 pages and five years; ₦200,000 for 64 pages and ten years ("Exclusive of Bank Charges").

Time. "42 days after Successful Enrolment" for a first passport; "21 days" for a re-issue.

Step 2. Your certificates and your NARIC Ireland statement

Do. Put together every health or care certificate you hold, with its transcript or list of modules and hours. Then download the free Irish letter that says what your certificate equals in Ireland (NARIC Ireland's comparability statement): "NARIC Ireland's searchable Foreign Qualifications Database ... allows you to freely download a comparability statement". Search for Nigeria and pick the award that matches yours by its name and its length (Part 1, Who this route fits). If your award is not on the list, "you can apply for advice on the general academic recognition of your qualification". A short course from a private training centre may not be on the list: put it on your CV as training, and count on your experience. Do not pay for a new certificate in Nigeria (an agent's "UK Level 3 or Level 5 diploma") before an employer tells you in writing that it accepts it. If your certificate is from a UK awarding body, search NARIC Ireland for that award by name, and ask each employer before you apply whether it accepts it.

Where. QQI, Recognition of foreign qualifications, opens in a new tab. QQI is Ireland's qualifications body.

Cost. Free.

You are done when you hold the letter as a PDF beside your certificate.

What it does not do. "NARIC Ireland does not verify authenticity of qualifications and credentials": it does not check that your certificate is real, and the letter does not decide your permit. No page says whether the Department takes this letter as "equivalent" to the Level 5 care certificate for a care worker's first permit. Your employer reads it, and decides.

Step 3. Your work history, your letters and your references

Do. Write your full work history, month by month, with every gap explained. Ask each care employer for a letter on its letterhead with your job title, your dates, your duties and your hours. Ask two people, one of them your most recent employer, for written references.

Why. Irish law, in the nursing home regulations of 2013 as first made, lists what a nursing home must hold for every member of staff: "Evidence of the person's identity", "A vetting disclosure", "documentary evidence of any relevant qualifications or accredited training", "A full employment history, together with a satisfactory history of any gaps in employment", and "Two written references, including a reference from a person's most recent employer (if any)". A vetting disclosure is the result of the Irish police check (Garda vetting, Stage 7). The visa asks the same proof of your work: "Your 3 most recent payslips, Regular salary payments to your personal bank account, Employment letter from your current employer, Personal tax statements, Professional certificates, Training certificates."

What the visa office will not take. Business letters must carry a landline number ("We do not accept mobile or cell phone numbers"); "Yahoo and Hotmail email addresses are not accepted"; "Electronic signatures are not accepted". Ask your employers for letters that meet these now, so you ask once.

If a family employed you, or you were paid in cash. The rules above are the same for you. The visa reads your work in "Your 3 most recent payslips, Regular salary payments to your personal bank account, Employment letter from your current employer, Personal tax statements". A letter must carry a landline number, not a mobile, an email that is not Yahoo or Hotmail, and a signature in ink. Start now to have your salary paid into a bank account in your own name, so the six months of statements the visa reads show it. No page says what the Embassy takes from a household employer, or from an employer with no landline. Ask the Embassy through its web form before you gather your letters, and keep its answer.

Step 4. Your bank statements

Do. Keep your salary paid into an account in your own name, and keep money in it. The visa asks "an up-to-date bank statement, showing what money has been paid into and out of the account over the last six months, and showing sufficient funds to cover your costs". Show steady money in and out over the six months, enough to cover your costs until your first pay in Ireland (Part 7). "Any large lodgements must be explained": a lodgement is money paid in, and a big sum paid in just before you apply is a lodgement you must explain. Do not let anyone put money in your account to make it look bigger, and do not buy a statement; a false document can bring a 5-year ban (Stage 3, Step 2).

Your bank. The Embassy in Abuja does not accept "micro-finance statements, mortgage statements, statements from thrift and savings societies". Look at the bank's full name on your statement. If it says Microfinance Bank, the Embassy will not take it: have your salary paid into a commercial bank account now.

The paper. Statements "must be on headed paper, internet printouts will not be accepted". Ask your bank's branch for the statement, printed on the bank's letterhead and stamped.

From people who did it. Visa applicants in Abuja, most of them students, wrote online in 2026 that refusals came for unexplained gaps, missing employment letters, and three months of statements instead of six.

Step 5. Your Police Character Certificate, when the employer asks

Do. Do not get it yet. Get it the week your employer tells you when it wants it (Stage 3 asks).

Why the wait. The visa's list asks for no police certificate. Every nursing home must hold the result of the Irish police check (Garda vetting) for you (Stage 7). The HSE, for its own staff, asks for a police clearance from every country you lived in for six months or more since 16, "dated after you left that country". No page gives a private employer's rule. Ask your employer at the offer whether it wants your Nigerian certificate, and whether before you fly or after you arrive.

Where and how. The Nigeria Police Force's Police Services portal, possap.gov.ng, opens in a new tab: apply and upload, attend biometric capture at your designated police station, then download the certificate once it is approved. You need the application form, your National Identity Card or NIN slip, your passport's data page, two passport photographs (white background, 35 by 45 mm), evidence of payment, your birth certificate or declaration of age, and "Employer's or sponsor's letter (for employment-related applications)". "5 to 7 working days" from complete papers, or 2 to 3 working days for more. The fee is the one Police Services shows when you apply.

You are done with Stage 1 when your passport, your certificates with your comparison letter, your work history, your employers' letters, two references, three recent payslips and six months of statements sit in one folder, scanned and on paper.

Next. Stage 2: find an employer that sponsors.

Stage 2. Find an employer that sponsors

Back to the short stages

Your papers are ready. Now find the employer that will apply for your permit (that sponsors you). This is the stage that decides your route. The employer advertises the job, meets the rule that at least half its staff are Irish, British or other Europeans the permit counts (the 50:50 rule, Part 1), and applies for your permit. Nothing moves until one says yes.

Step 1. Know who can hire you

Do. Apply only to these employers: private nursing homes (called designated centres for older people), disability services, and home care companies. Leave out the HSE, Ireland's public health service. It applies for permits only for jobs on the list of jobs Ireland is short of (the Critical Skills Occupations List). Its page says: "For permanent roles, the Health Service Executive (HSE) will only be in a position to sponsor you for an Employment Permit if the role you are applying for is on the Critical Skills Occupations List ... If the role is not on the Critical Skills Occupations List then the HSE will be unable to offer sponsorship regardless of whether or not you are successful at interview." Leave out private families (Part 1).

Read the title. Apply to posts titled health care assistant, care assistant, care worker, home carer or home support worker. A senior carer or team leader post gets no permit outside disability services.

From the adverts. Many care adverts online in 2026 are closed to you before you read the duties: "EU APPLICANTS ONLY", "Candidates must hold European or UK passport", "unable to provide visa sponsorship for this role". Read the advert's last lines first. A "relocation package" (help to move) in an advert does not mean the employer will apply for your permit: ask.

Step 2. Search where the sponsored jobs are

Do. Search JobsIreland, opens in a new tab, Ireland's Government job site, for health care assistant, care assistant and home carer. Every job an employer advertises for a work permit (the General Employment Permit) runs there "for 28 days continuously and unaltered". So a job that comes with a permit is on JobsIreland before the employer can apply for anyone. You can search without an account. To apply on the site you register, and "you may be redirected to MyGovID.ie to confirm your identity" (MyGovID is Ireland's online ID). A basic MyGovID needs only "first name, last name and email address". No page says whether a person living outside Ireland can register. If the site will not let you, apply through the employer's own contact in the advert. Search the nursing homes' and home care companies' own career pages too.

What a sponsoring advert looks like. It says in words that the employer will apply for your permit. A nursing home group's advert in Co. Offaly, published on 28 September 2026, offered "Relocation package on offer, paid flights, temporary accommodation and transfer from the airport". It asked for a Level 5 "or equivalent", two years' experience and a full driving licence. Its pay reads "31000.00 - 36036.00 Euro Annually" in one place and "€32,900-€36,036" in another, for 42 hours a week. On 42 hours the permit needs about €35,206 a year (€32,691 plus €16.12 for each hour above 39; about ₦52.7 million), so its €31,000 and €32,900 are both below it. Ask the employer in writing what basic pay it will put in your contract for your hours. Ask, too, whether extra payments fixed in your contract (premium payments), or health insurance paid for you, make up the rest.

Through an agency. An Irish agency can find you the job, but the nursing home or the home care company must be your employer. Check the agency's licence (Stage 3).

Step 3. Apply, and your interview

Do. Apply with a short CV that names each care job, its dates, its duties (personal care, moving and handling, feeding, care of residents with dementia), and your certificate with the level its comparison letter gives. Attach nothing you would not show the visa office.

The interview. Employers' adverts in 2026 say the interviews are online ("Interviews will be conducted online by appointment"). Ask the employer how its interview runs and who will sit on it. The adverts stress communication, dignity in personal care, helping residents move, and "flexible day and night shifts". Prepare to describe a resident you cared for, what you did and why.

You are done when an employer offers you a job in writing, from its own email address, naming the job title, the pay, the hours and the place of work.

Next. Stage 3, before you say yes.

Stage 3. Check the offer and sign the contract

Back to the short stages

You hold an offer. Now check it, ask your questions in writing, and sign. Do this before you send any copy of your passport beyond what the application needs, and before you pay for anything.

Step 1. Check the employer and the job

Do these checks, all of them:

• The company exists. Search it on Ireland's company register (the Companies Registration Office's CORE search): "To use CORE you need to be a registered user. Registration is free". A printout of the company's basic details is €3.50 (about ₦5,240).
• The nursing home is registered. Search it on HIQA's Find a centre, opens in a new tab, with "Older Person's" or "Disability" and its county. HIQA is the body that registers and inspects nursing homes.
• The offer came from the employer. Phone, or email from your own address, the number or the email address on the nursing home's or the company's own website, not the one in the message. Ask its manager or its HR office to confirm the offer, the job and the start date. The Journal, an Irish news site, reported in September 2025 that agencies sold nurses offers built from real nursing homes' letterheads, and the homes had no record of them.
• The advert. Ask for the advert's JobsIreland reference number, or the day the employer will publish it; the permit application cannot go in without it. The employer must give it on your permit application ("Provide Department of Social Protection Employment Services/EURES Employment Network Reference Number of the advertisement for the job").
• The pay is the permit's. At least €32,691 a year in basic pay for 39 hours, €33,529.60 for 40. Extra payments fixed in your contract (premium payments) and health insurance paid for you can count (Part 1). On fewer than 39 hours a week, the yearly basic pay must still reach €32,691, so the hourly rate is higher. On more than 39 hours, every extra hour must be paid at least €16.12. A contract with no fixed hours does not show it. The lowest pay the permit allows (the pay floor) for health care assistants and home carers changes from January 2027; the figure is not yet published. If your employer will apply on or after 1 January 2027, ask in writing that your basic pay meets the floor in force on the day it applies.
• The title is open. Not senior carer or team leader outside disability services; not a private family.
• The home exists and is open. Care workers from Zimbabwe told Ireland's work rights office (the WRC) in November 2025 that the care home they had paid to work in "had not opened" when they arrived. Search the home's name on HIQA and ask its start date.

Check an agency. An Irish agency must be on the WRC's "List of licensed Employment Agencies". The list gives each agency's licence number ("EA" and four figures; the list of 1 October 2026 is on the WRC's Employment Agencies page, opens in a new tab). "It is an offence under the Act for an employment agency to carry on business without an employment agency licence." To be licensed, an agency gives the WRC "A copy of your 'Statement of Fees' - stating that you will never charge a candidate a fee." Look for a Nigerian agent on the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment's list of registered private employment agencies, opens in a new tab, and ask to see its Recruiter's Licence for international placement. If it is not on the list, do not deal with it. The list shows names, emails and CAC verification, not the licence's type or date. The Ministry's site has a "Report Abuse" page.

Step 2. The signs that an offer is not real

Stop, and pay nothing, if you see any of these:

• A fee for the job, or a permit fee paid to anyone but the Department, or a visa fee paid to anyone but the visa centre. Where your employer applied, it may not take back the permit fee (the Department's page); whoever applies, get it in writing that the fee will never be deducted. Your employer may not take back the cost of recruiting you or travel costs it paid you (Part 1, The money). A licensed Irish agency must never charge a candidate; Irish law says an agency "shall not charge any fee solely for agreeing to seek employment for another person".
• A permit promised before any advert, or in two weeks. The advert runs 28 days before the employer can apply, and the application goes in at least 12 weeks before your start.
• An offer the employer cannot confirm when you phone, or email from your own address, the number or the email address on its own website, not the one in the message.
• Pay below €32,691 for 39 hours, or a title the permit does not cover.
• Someone who will keep your passport. The Act forbids an employer to keep your personal documents.
• A "group" visa, or papers someone makes up for you: a bank statement, a letter or a certificate that is not truly yours. The Embassy in Abuja: "An application containing a deception such as a forged document, a document containing false information or information withheld from an application (such as a previous visa refusal) may result in your application being refused without the prospect of appeal. If the application was submitted as part of a group, all applications in that group maybe refused without appeal. Where applications are rejected on the grounds of a deception, a 5-year ban may also be applied."

Step 3. Ask in writing before you sign

Do. Email the employer these questions and keep its answers:

1. Will you apply for my General Employment Permit, and pay its fee? Will you confirm in writing that no part of it will ever be taken from my pay?
2. What is my job title, and the job code (SOC code) you will put on the application?
3. Do at least half of all your employees, in every home and every role, count today as "EEA and/or Swiss Nationals/UK nationals (including Irish)"? (The rule: the permit "will not issue unless at the time of application at least 50% of the employees in a firm are EEA nationals", and the ratio "is calculated based on all employees of an employer regardless of their role".)
4. Do you pay my flight? Do you give me housing at first, at what cost a week, and is it taken from my pay?
5. Who pays my Level 5 course, and do I repay anything if I leave?
6. Is there any sum I repay if I leave before a date? Does my contract ask me to repay my flight, my relocation or anything else if I leave?
7. Do you want my Nigerian Police Character Certificate, a health check or a vaccine record, and when? When will you start my Irish police check (Garda vetting), and can it start before I fly? Am I paid my full contract pay from my first day, during induction and training while my police check is pending?
8. How many hours a week, which shifts, and what do you pay for Sundays, nights and sleepovers? Are my hours fixed at 39 a week or more?
9. Are my shifts at least four hours unbroken? For home care: do you pay the time between calls, and do you need a driving licence I do not hold?
10. The floor for health care assistants and home carers changes from January 2027, and the figure is not yet published. If you apply on or after 1 January 2027, will my basic pay meet the floor in force on the day you apply?

Why each one. Question 1: the Department's page stops the employer from taking the fee back "Where the employer is the applicant" (Part 1, The money). So question 1 settles who applies and who pays, and its second half gets the promise in writing whoever applies. Question 2: the code decides the cap on permits (Part 1, What this job is). The code also decides which jobs you can move to after nine months (Stage 9, Changing employer). Question 3: the Journal reported in June 2026 that up to 200 nurses and health care assistants at one nursing home group had their permit renewals refused, because the group failed the 50:50 rule. The Irish Times newspaper reported in August 2026 that a new nursing home in Dublin stood empty while its owners waited for the rule to change. Questions 4 and 6: your employer may not take back travel costs it paid you (Part 1, The money). If your employer books or pays your flight, get it in writing that you will never repay it, whenever you leave. Question 5: the law makes training that "an employer is required by law ... to provide" free and counted as working time. But the Level 5 is asked of you, not the employer, and no page says who pays for it. A person in Ireland wrote online in August 2026 that one private college charged about €700 for it and another as much as €4,000 (about ₦1.05 million to ₦5.99 million). Another wrote that a friend's employer took it from her pay bit by bit. Question 7: the police certificate is your employer's call (Stage 1, Step 5). A nursing home must hold the result of your Irish police check, and until it is in you do induction and training, not care work (Stage 7, Step 4), so your pay in those weeks matters. Question 8: a contract below 39 hours must still reach €32,691 a year (Step 1). Question 9's four hours: the Department's notice of 16 December 2022 (Part 1, Your qualification for the first permit). Questions 8 and 9: in the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland's survey, some health care assistants had to be available from 7.30am to 9.30pm and were paid for 8 hours, and home care workers were not paid for the time between calls. Question 10: Stage 8, What Budget 2027 announced.

Step 4. Sign the contract

Do. Sign a contract of employment with the employer itself (not an agency), for at least the time the permit will cover. It must have your job title, your basic pay of at least €32,691 for 39 hours, your hours, your place or places of work, and any deduction written in. The floor for health care assistants and home carers changes from January 2027; the figure is not yet published. If your employer will apply on or after 1 January 2027, ask in writing that your basic pay meets the floor in force on the day it applies. "A contract of employment signed by both parties must be submitted with each application." The permit names your place of work: "Prospective employee can only work at locations of employment as stated on application and noted on employment permit."

"Subject to Garda vetting" is normal. Nursing Homes Ireland, the nursing homes' own body: "A job offer and contract of employment can be issued pending Vetting, provided they are aware that the offer is made subject to Vetting." A contract that says it depends on the Irish police check (subject to Garda vetting) is not a sign of a fake offer.

If you will bring your family. Their visa asks for your "contract of employment of at least 1 year from your proposed date of entry" (Stage 9). Ask now for a permanent contract, or one that runs at least a year past the day they would arrive.

The start date. Twelve weeks after the day the employer applies is the legal minimum, but the times in this guide add up to more. There are about five weeks in the permit queue (Stage 4), then about 8 weeks for the visa by the Irish Immigration Service's page, or 16 weeks or more by the reports of people who applied in 2025 and 2026 (Stage 5). That is about 13 weeks by the pages, 21 weeks or more by the reports. Agree a start date about five months after the day the employer applies. Ask the employer to write into the contract that your start date moves to the day your visa comes, inside the permit's six months. To your flight, that is about four months from the yes by the official pages, about six months or more by the 2025 and 2026 reports.

Do not resign yet. A Nigerian applicant who resigned before the visa came wrote online in August 2026: "I made the mistake and it's the worse decision of my life right now and it's been hell getting another job since then." Keep your job and your salary account until the visa is in your passport. Your salary also feeds the six months of statements the visa asks.

You are done when you and the employer have both signed the contract and you hold its answers to your ten questions in writing.

Next. Stage 4: the employer's advert and your permit.

Stage 4. The advert and your permit

Back to the short stages

Your contract is signed. Now the employer runs its advert, if it has not yet, and applies for your work permit (the General Employment Permit). You wait and answer quickly when asked.

Step 1. The employer's advert: 28 days

What the employer does. "A notice must be placed with the Department of Social Protection Employment Services/EURES employment network for a minimum of 28 days (continuously); and The notice must be placed on an additional online platform, also for a minimum of 28 continuous days." That means the employer advertises the job on JobsIreland, Ireland's Government job site, and on one more job site, each for at least 28 days in a row. This advert is the 28-day job advert the law asks for before a permit (the Labour Market Needs Test). Each notice gives the job's description, the employer's name, the minimum pay, the place of work and the hours. "Vacancies should not be amended or extended, at any time, during the 28 days." The application must then go in "within 90 days ... from the day in which the notice was first published". If the job you answered on JobsIreland was the employer's notice, its 28 days may already be done; if not, they run now.

What you do. Find the advert on JobsIreland with the reference number the employer gave you. Note the day it started: the application must go in within 90 days of it.

Step 2. The application: what you give

What the employer gives. Its statement from Ireland's tax office (its Revenue statement) "dated within the 3-month period preceding the application". Its "Number of EEA and/or Swiss Nationals/UK nationals (including Irish)" and its "Number of non-EEA Nationals". Whether any jobs were cut (redundancies) that "have taken place in the last 6 months for the same role". The job's duties and place, and the pay ("Hourly and weekly rates of pay", "Number of hours of work each week", "Details any deductions from salary and what deductions are for"). The advert's reference number, and the payment. Ask your employer for a copy of the pay and deductions it entered. If a deduction is taken later that is not there, you can complain to Ireland's work rights office (the WRC, Stage 8).

What you give the employer, from the checklist:

• "Name, date of birth, gender, nationality, current address, telephone number, email address and PPS number (if you already have one)."
• "Passport number and expiry date (Passport must be valid for at least 6 months for a new employment permit and 3 months for a renewal employment permit)."
• "Copy of employee's passport clearly showing his/her picture, personal details, date, and signature."
• "A passport type photo of employee."
• "Confirm details of qualifications relevant to the role."
• "Details of qualifications/skills/knowledge and experience of the non-EEA national."
• "Details of previous visa permissions or employments in the State."
• "Copy of contract signed by employer and employee."

A PPS number is your Irish tax number; you get it after you arrive (Stage 7). Send these from your Stage 1 folder the day the employer asks. Every party signs the declaration online by "e-signature".

When it goes in. "An application for any employment permit must be received at least 12 weeks before the proposed employment start date." An unfinished application is deleted after 28 days: "If an application form has not been submitted or completed within 28 days, it is deleted."

On your own application. You open your own account on the Department's online permit site (Employment Permits Online): "User clicks on `Create an Account', then clicks on `I am an Employee'". You verify your email and phone, upload your passport photo, enter the "Employer Name and Register Number" and pick its contact person. Then you choose who pays, and the payer clicks "Pay Now".

Step 3. The wait and the decision

The queue. Applications "are processed in date order of receipt of the fully completed application form and fee". On 19 October 2026 the Department was working on new work permit applications received on 14 September 2026: about five weeks before an officer opens yours. "The processor may request additional information, if required, which should be returned within 28 days." Answer the same week.

The decision. The permit "is issued to the foreign national, and a certified copy sent to the employer". It is issued for up to two years at first. If it is refused, you can ask for the decision to be looked at again (a review) "within 28 days on the prescribed Submission of a Decision for Review Form". On 19 October 2026 reviews received on 29 April 2026 were being worked on, about five and a half months behind. A refusal costs you months, so check every paper with your employer before the application goes in.

The fee. €1,000 (about ₦1.50 million) for six to 24 months, paid by the applicant. There is no fee where the employer "has charitable status confirmed by the Revenue Commissioners" (the fees page, dated 22 March 2021). If the application is refused, "90% of the fee will be refunded", to the applicant only.

Your clock. "The foreign national must commence employment within a period of six months from when the permit is granted or comes into force." Your visa, your flight and your first day must all fit inside those six months: apply for the visa as soon as Stage 5 allows. If four months pass after the grant with no visa decision, tell your employer. Then ask the Department's permit office (the Employment Permits Section) in writing what happens to your permit if you cannot start in time.

You are done when you hold your work permit, with your name, your employer, your job and its job code, and your place of work.

If it goes wrong. If the employer fails the 50:50 rule, the permit "will not issue". If it is refused for something you can fix (a missing paper), ask for the review within 28 days of the decision; the review itself takes months (The decision, above). Questions to the Employment Permits Section: employmentpermits@enterprise.gov.ie, opens in a new tab, and for the online system EPOS@enterprise.gov.ie, opens in a new tab; phone (059) 9178900, Monday to Friday from 9.30am.

Next. Stage 5: your visa, as soon as your travel date allows.

Stage 5. Your visa

Back to the short stages

You hold your permit. Now apply for the long-stay work visa (the employment visa), as soon as Step 1 allows. The Irish Immigration Service: "Once you have received a permit", you apply for the employment visa. A Nigerian needs a visa to enter Ireland. It is a D visa: "'D' means that this is a long stay visa. It is issued for visits to Ireland of 90 days or more."

Step 1. Apply online

Do. "Fill in the online visa application form, Print it, Sign it, Keep your 8 digit visa reference number." Apply "up to 3 months before your date of travel to Ireland". Your travel date on the form is your contract's start date. If that date is within 3 months, apply the week the permit comes. If it is not, ask your employer in writing to bring the start date forward, or apply on the first day it is within 3 months. The Embassy recommends at least twelve weeks before travel.

Where. The Irish Immigration Service's online visa form (AVATS), from the Embassy of Ireland, Nigeria, Visas for Ireland, opens in a new tab. Your application summary tells you how to book your appointment at the visa centre that takes your papers and fingerprints (the visa application centre, run by VFS): "Details of how to make an appointment for the VAC will be included in your application summary form." Book through the link in your application summary from the Embassy's page; never use a VFS link from an agent or a message. Choose the visa centre nearest you, and count the trip in your costs.

Step 2. Your papers

What you need, from the Irish Immigration Service's list and the Embassy's page:

• Your passport, valid "for at least twelve months after the date you plan to arrive", with a photocopy of every page, and of each page of all your previous passports.
• Two colour photographs "not more than 6 months old", with your visa application number signed on the back.
• Your application letter: your full contact details, why you are going, how long, any family in Ireland or the EU, where you will stay, and that you will keep the visa's conditions.
• Your work permit and your contract of employment.
• A letter from your employer in Ireland: "Details of your new job", "The salary you will be paid" and "Details of the accommodation, if the employer is providing you with accommodation". On its letterhead, with a landline number.
• Evidence of your qualifications and work: your three most recent payslips, your salary payments, your employer's letter, tax statements, certificates.
• Six months of bank statements on the bank's letterhead, with any large sum paid in (a lodgement) explained (Stage 1, Step 4).
• Any previous refusal by any country, with the original letter.
• A certified translation of any paper not in English.
• "A prepaid envelope", which you can buy at VFS.

What the list does not ask. No medical examination, no yellow fever certificate and no police certificate. "Evidence of medical or travel insurance does not need to be provided with your application. However, the Visa Officer may request it."

How to hand them in. Originals and photocopies separate, "not in envelopes or folders", every document "original, legible, verifiable".

Step 3. Your appointment at VFS

Do. Go in person to your appointment with your papers, your passport and the fee. Your fingerprints are taken: "Your four fingers and thumb of each hand will be electronically scanned." Come with clean, undecorated fingers: with injured or decorated fingers ("for example, henna") "your visa application will not be accepted and you will be asked to return".

Cost. ₦91,840 for a single-entry visa (€60), or ₦153,067 (€100) if your visa is issued for more than one entry (multi-entry): VFS's own naira figures, read on its fee page on 26 October 2026. You pay it in naira at the visa centre, by card (POS), QR code or cash (Part 7, Paying from Nigeria). "This fee cannot be refunded if your application is refused or withdrawn." "VFS charges its own visa processing fee in addition": VFS's service charge is ₦104,849, paid by debit or credit card when you book your appointment online. A visa applicant wrote online in July 2025 that the visa fee came to about ₦95,000, VFS's charge to about ₦105,000 and the courier to about ₦25,000, and advised going with ₦250,000 to ₦300,000.

Step 4. The wait

Time. "Applicants can expect a decision within approximately 8 weeks from the date their application was received at the visa office". The Embassy in Abuja: "Visa processing times start from date of receipt in the Embassy, not date of lodgment at the Visa Application Centre (VAC)". So the clock starts when your papers reach the Embassy, not the day you hand them in at the visa centre. The Embassy adds: "we recommend that you apply twelve weeks in advance of your travel dates. We advise all applicants not to book flights until you have received and validated your visa." "Flight bookings are not required for a visa."

From people who did it. An employment visa applicant wrote online in September 2025 that theirs, handed in on 26 May 2025, had no answer after 16 weeks. A work permit holder wrote in July 2026 that the visa they applied for in January was "still under processing". People applying in Abuja for Irish visas of every kind, most of them students, reported 12 to 17 weeks from late 2025 to October 2026. Tell your employer the day you hand in your papers, and keep your job.

Following it. The Embassy publishes weekly decision lists by application number on its Weekly Decision Reports page, opens in a new tab. Questions go through the Embassy's web form, or by phone on +234 209 462 1080.

You are done when your passport comes back with the D visa in it. Read its Remarks line (Stage 6 needs it) and its dates.

If it goes wrong. "If your visa application is refused, you will receive a letter from the visa office telling you why it has been refused and if you can appeal the decision." "Your letter of refusal will state if you are allowed to appeal." On 1 June 2026, refusals of short-stay visas lost their appeal; refusals of long-stay visas, like yours, kept it. "In some circumstances, you cannot appeal a visa decision and may be blocked from applying for a visa for up to 5 years. This may happen if you submitted false or misleading information." If your letter allows an appeal, it must arrive "within 2 months of the date on the letter of refusal". "There is no fee." Your appeal must "refer to the reasons the application was refused (as stated in the letter of refusal)": answer each reason with a paper. Your permit's six months keep running while you appeal: tell your employer the day the letter comes.

Next. Stage 6: travel.

Stage 6. Travel

Back to the short stages

Your visa is in your passport. Now buy your insurance and your flight, and fly within your visa's dates and your permit's six months.

Do, in this order:

1. Buy medical or travel insurance that covers you from the day you land. "If your visa is approved, you must have evidence of medical or travel insurance when you arrive."
2. Agree your arrival with your employer: your first night's address, who meets you, and your first day.
3. Book your flight. Your employer may not take back travel costs it paid you; if your employer books or pays your flight, get it in writing that you will never repay it, whenever you leave (Part 1, The money).
4. Pack your papers in your hand luggage: your passport with the visa, your permit, your contract, your employer's letter, your insurance, your first address, and your Stage 1 folder.

Changing planes before Dublin. In the UK: "You'll need a visa to pass through the UK (unless you're exempt)". You can change planes there without a UK visa only with "an Irish biometric visa (marked 'BC' or 'BC BIVS' in the 'Remarks' section) and an onward flight ticket to the Republic of Ireland". Your connection must leave before midnight on the day after you arrive, and "You will not be able to transit without a visa if a Border Force officer decides you do not qualify." Read your visa's Remarks line before you book. In an airport of the European countries that share one visa system (the Schengen area), Nigerians need a visa just to change planes (an airport transit visa). The EU's visa rules (its Visa Code) excuse a person from it if she holds a visa for an EU country outside Schengen and is flying to that country. Ireland is outside Schengen, but no page names Ireland in that rule. Wherever you change planes, ask the airline in writing, before you pay, whether it will carry you on your Irish visa alone.

At the airport in Ireland. "An Irish visa allows you to travel to Ireland. It does not give you permission to enter the country." The immigration officer stamps your passport: "The duration of stay permitted is at the discretion of the immigration officer, up to a maximum of 3 months." Show your permit, your employer's letter and your insurance if asked. "You must register your permission within 90 days of arriving in Ireland."

You are done when your passport carries your landing stamp.

Next. Stage 7, from your first day.

Stage 7. Your first weeks

Back to the short stages

You have landed. Now do these in the first two weeks, in this order, because each one opens the next.

Step 1. Book your registration and get your IRP card

Do. Open an account on the Irish Immigration Service's online portal (the Customer Service Portal, opens in a new tab) and book your first registration appointment. Registration is where you get your residence card (the IRP card). You must book it yourself: "Appointments for individuals who are over sixteen years of age must be made by the individual who is to be registered." Booking is free: "Any third party operator offering an appointment booking service for a fee is not operating on behalf of the Immigration Service."

Where. Since 13 January 2025 the Irish Immigration Service registers all applicants in the State; its page names the Registration Office at 13-14 Burgh Quay, Dublin 2. Your booking shows where your appointment is. If your job is outside Dublin, ask your employer before you fly whether it gives you the day off and pays the fare, and count the trip in your first weeks' money.

What you need. "The biometric page of your current valid passport(s)", "Your employment permit", "Proof of your new employment, for example a letter from your employer", proof of your address in Ireland, your visa and your landing stamp.

Cost. "The registration fee is €300 (per person), if applicable. You can pay this fee by credit or debit card only." About ₦449,100. You pay it before you have an Irish account: bring a card that can pay €300 abroad in one payment (Part 7, Paying from Nigeria), or ask your employer how its new staff pay it.

Time. "The visit should take no longer than 30 minutes." Your residence card comes by post: "You should receive it within 10 working days." Your first permission stamp (Stamp 1) is "usually valid for 12 months".

You are done when your residence card arrives. Note its expiry date: you renew before it (Stage 9).

Step 2. Your PPS number and your job on Revenue

Do. Apply for your Irish tax number (your PPS number) on the Government's welfare website (MyWelfare) once you have an address: "you must wait until you are in Ireland to apply for your PPS number". You then attend "an in-person appointment at a PPS Number Allocation Centre". Bring your passport and proof of your address "not older than 3 months". That can be a utility bill, a bank statement, a tenancy agreement, an official letter, or "If you are staying with friends or relatives, an original household bill together with a note from the bill holder confirming that you live at the address on the bill". The number comes by post: ask at the appointment when to expect it.

Then. Register for the online account of Ireland's tax office (Revenue's myAccount) and add your job: "click 'Add Job or Pension Details' under the 'PAYE Services' tab", with your employer's own tax number (its Tax Registration Number). Revenue then sends your employer the notice it uses to take the right tax from your pay.

Why now. Without your tax number, "Your employer will tax all your pay at the higher rate of tax (40%)", and USC (a second charge on pay) at 8%. With the number but no job registered, for four weeks only a single person's share of your pay is taxed at the lower rate (the rate band), and USC is at the emergency rate of 8%. From week 5 all your pay is taxed at 40%. Register the job before your first payday. Give your employer your tax number before your first payday.

Step 3. A bank account

Do. Open a current account with your passport (or your residence card) and a proof of address: "You cannot use the same document as proof of both your identity and your address." Basic bank accounts "offer free everyday banking for the first 12 months" to people legally resident in the EU who have no current account. Give the account to your employer for your pay.

Step 4. Garda vetting

Do. Your employer starts the Irish police check (Garda vetting) and gives you a form to fill (a vetting invitation form). Fill it in, give your proof of identity, and meet the person from the organisation who checks it. You then get an email with a link to the online form: complete it at once, because "The link will expire after 30 days." The result (the vetting disclosure) goes to your employer, not to you. Ask your employer how long it usually takes.

Until it is in. Every nursing home must hold "A vetting disclosure" for each member of staff (the nursing home regulations of 2013, as first made, Schedule 2). Nursing Homes Ireland, the nursing homes' own body, says: "all Nursing Home Employees who have contact with Children or Vulnerable Persons must be Garda Vetted prior to commencing Employment", and "During this waiting period, the employee cannot engage in 'Relevant work' ... They can, however, engage in induction or training". So in a nursing home, until your police check result is in, you do induction (your first training as new staff) and training, not care work. At a home care company or a disability service, ask your employer when you may start care work.

Your pay in these weeks. Your contract pay runs from your first day. Training your employer must give by law is free to you and counts as working time (a 2022 law, S.I. 686 of 2022: Stage 8, Step 3). If your employer changes your terms or cuts your hours (short-time working), it must tell the Department.

Step 5. A doctor

Do. Find a family doctor (a GP) near you on the HSE's Find a GP search and register. "You do not need a Personal Public Service (PPS) number or other documentation to visit a GP." A visit costs "from around 45 euro up to 65 euro (in some urban areas)" (about ₦67,365 to ₦97,305).

Step 6. A home

At first. Employers that recruit from abroad often offer staff housing or temporary accommodation in their 2026 adverts. If yours does, keep its weekly cost in writing. Housing given by your employer counts towards the national minimum wage only, at "€33.42 a week or €4.77 a day" (about ₦50,030 a week). Housing is neither basic pay nor health insurance, so it does not count towards the permit's €32,691 (Part 1). A housing charge comes off your pay only if your contract provides for it or you agreed to it in writing beforehand. Where the housing is necessary to the job, the charge "must not exceed the cost to the employer". Get the weekly sum in writing before you move in.

Renting. "A landlord cannot ask for a deposit that is more than one month's rent", nor more than one month's rent in advance. Your landlord must register your tenancy with the Irish rent board (the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB) within one month. Keep the letter with its RT number, because your family's application needs it (Stage 9). "If you are renting a room in your landlord's home you are not covered by landlord and tenant legislation." "Inspect the property in person. Do not rely on online videos or photos", and "Avoid making cash payments".

What rent costs. The rent board's figures for January to March 2026 give the average monthly rent of a whole home newly let: €2,335 in Dublin (about ₦3.50 million), €1,678 in Cork, €1,718 in Galway, €1,744 in Limerick, €1,107 in Donegal and €1,040 in Leitrim (about ₦1.56 million), with €1,839 across the country. They give no figure for a room. Nigerians in Ireland wrote online that shared rooms in Cork cost €500 to €650 a month in 2025 (about ₦748,500 to ₦973,050), and rooms in Dublin €1,300 to €1,500 in 2026. One wrote that in Dublin "most people pair" (share a room), and others that towns outside Dublin are cheaper. On the same figures, every county outside Dublin is cheaper than Dublin. A €1,300 room in Dublin is more than half of the €2,311 a month in your hand (Stage 8).

The money for these weeks. The HSE's guide for the staff it brings from abroad says: "On estimate you should have in the region of €4000 available to you to spend to get set up initially on arrival in Ireland" (about ₦5.99 million), and "It may take up to two months before you are paid". Ask your employer when your first pay comes, and bring enough to reach it.

You are done with Stage 7 when you hold your residence card, your tax number, your job on Revenue's myAccount, a bank account, your police check form completed, a GP and an address.

Stage 8. Your first payslip

Back to the short stages

Your police check result is in. You are at work. Now read your terms, know your hours and read your first payslip line by line.

Step 1. Your written terms

Do. Ask for your written statement. "Within the first 5 days of starting a job, your employer must give you part of your 'written statement of terms of employment'", the core terms. These include the employer's and your names, the place of work, the job title, "The rate or method of calculating your pay", and your normal hours. "Within 1 month of starting the job, your employer must give you the remaining terms", including paid leave, sick pay, pension, notice and "Any training to be provided by your employer". Check them against your contract and your permit.

Step 2. Your hours, your breaks and your leave

• Your week. "The maximum number of hours you can work in an average working week is 48 hours." The average runs over 4 months for most employees, and 6 months in hospitals and some other settings; ask your employer which applies to you.
• Your breaks. "A 15 minute break when you have worked more than 4 ½ hours"; "A 30 minute break when you have worked more than 6 hours, which can include the first 15-minute break." They are unpaid unless your contract says otherwise. "You have the right to 11 consecutive hours in any 24 hours", and a weekly rest of 24 hours.
• Sundays. If your contract gives no Sunday pay, "your employer must give you one (or more) of the following: A reasonable allowance, A reasonable pay increase, Reasonable paid time off work".
• Nights. Night work is work between midnight and 7am. "If you work in a residential healthcare setting that provides care on a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week basis, you may be required to sleep at your workplace." For a sleepover shift "You are entitled to at least minimum wage ... even if you are allowed to sleep between tasks." Before night work, "your employer must offer you a free health assessment".
• Overtime. "There is no legal right to pay for working extra hours", but on the permit every hour above 39 is paid at least €16.12.
• Your leave. "Most employees are entitled to 4 working weeks' of annual leave each year", in full once you have worked 1,365 hours in the leave year.

Step 3. Your training at work

What the nursing home must give. The nursing home regulations of 2013, as first made: staff must "have access to appropriate training"; training in "the detection and prevention of and responses to abuse"; "suitable training in fire prevention and emergency procedures". The standards of HIQA, the body that inspects nursing homes, add "Orientation and induction training is provided to all staff when they start working in the service" and training "in infection prevention and control". Training your employer must give by law is free to you: it must "be provided to the employee free of cost", "count as working time" and, "where possible, take place during working hours".

Step 4. Read your first payslip

What comes off. On €32,691 a year, paid monthly, for a single person, at the rates in force on 14 October 2026:

Income tax is 20% of all of it, because €32,691 is under €44,000, and a single person's first €44,000 is taxed at 20%. Then the personal and employee tax credits, €2,000 each, come off the tax. That leaves about ₦41.5 million a year in your hand, or about ₦3.46 million a month. The PRSI rate rose from 4.2% to 4.35% on 1 October 2026. MyFutureFund, the workplace pension, takes 1.5% from you if you are 23 to 60, earn €20,000 or more and pay into no other pension through your pay. Your employer adds 1.5% and the Government 0.5%. "You can opt out (leave) after 6 months", and "If you opt out, the money you paid in your contributions will be refunded to you."

What Budget 2027 announced. Budget 2027 announced three changes from 1 January 2027: the 20% band up to €46,500, the personal and employee tax credits at €2,125 each, and the end of USC's 2% band at €30,300. On the announced figures, the same €32,691 would leave about €27,993 a year in your hand. No page gives the permit's pay floor for 2027 yet: the Department's roadmap sets it at "92.5% of GEP" from January 2027 (GEP is the General Employment Permit) with the figure "TBD". Citizens Information: "It was announced in Budget 2027 that the minimum wage will increase from 1 January 2027", to €14.94 an hour (about ₦22,365), below the permit's €16.12. "This change requires legislation."

If your first payslip is wrong. Taxed at 40%: give your employer your tax number (PPS number) and register the job on myAccount (Stage 7). Paid below €16.12 an hour or for fewer hours than you worked: raise it with your employer in writing. A complaint about pay, hours or breaks goes to Ireland's work rights office (the Workplace Relations Commission), "within 6 months" of the problem. In the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland's survey, 18% of permit holders were paid "less than the minimum wage or the hourly wage listed on their permit". Keep every payslip: your renewal needs three of them (Stage 9).

You are done when your first payslip shows basic pay at €32,691 a year or more and at least €16.12 for each hour, the hours you worked, and tax at the normal rates. You have arrived.

Stage 9. The years after

Back to the short stages

You are working in Ireland on your permit. These are the dates and the steps of the next five years.

The first nine months

You stay with your first employer for nine months, except where your job is cut (you are made redundant) or "Circumstances (unforeseen at time of application) arise that fundamentally change the employment relationship". In plain words, something nobody expected changes the job at its root. In the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland's survey, 45% answered no to "Did you know that prior to 9 months you can change employer if you have been mistreated at work?" If you are mistreated, write it down with dates and take it to Ireland's work rights office (the Workplace Relations Commission). Ask the Department's permit office (the Employment Permits Section) whether the exception covers you.

Your Level 5

When. Before your permit's renewal at two years. The permit rules (the Employment Permits Regulations 2024, as first made): for a health care assistant the renewal asks "a copy of the permit holder's relevant Level 5 Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) qualification or if not available, a copy of a declaration signed by the employer, clinical lead and permit holder confirming the permit holder has the appropriate skills required". For a care worker or home carer it asks the Level 5 "in health and social care, or an equivalent qualification", or the same declaration. A health care assistant holding "other relevant health and social care qualifications, comparable to a Level 5 QQI" can be "deemed to have met the skills and proficiency requirements". For that, "the clinical lead in the healthcare facility" (the person in charge of care where she works) certifies her.

What it is. The renewal asks for a "relevant Level 5" QQI qualification (above): the Level 5 care certificate. Healthcare Support (5M4339) is one such award, 120 credits: Care Support, Safety and Health at Work and Care Skills, plus communications, work experience, and subjects such as Care of the Older Person, Infection Prevention and Control and Palliative Care Support.

Where. Start it in your first year. The State's further education colleges list 14 courses for 5M4339 on fetchcourses.ie, opens in a new tab. A part-time course such as West Waterford's at Cappoquin lists no course fee. Every course says "Additional requirements may apply to non-EU/EEA Applicants and may be subject to full international fees". Cappoquin's Year 1 runs 4 hours a week for 38 weeks, from September to May, with enrolment closing in January and an interview to join, and a Year 2 course follows. The online course from Dublin College Loughlinstown runs 31 hours a week and is for "Learners ... currently employed in a Healthcare setting", with practical skills at its Loughlinstown centre. Every course asks for English at level B2 (upper-intermediate English) from learners whose first language is not English. Ask the college whether your WAEC or NECO English result is enough before you pay for any test. Ask the college, before you enrol, what it charges you as a permit holder, and ask your employer in writing who pays.

Your renewal at two years

Do. Your employer applies to renew your permit before it ends. The renewal asks for your Level 5 or the declaration, and "a copy of 3 recent payslips of the permit holder dated within the 4 month period prior to the application". A renewal is for up to three more years, and its fee is €1,500 (about ₦2.25 million) for six to 36 months. Where your employer is the applicant, it may not take back the renewal's fee either (the Department's page); get it in writing that it will never be deducted. On 19 October 2026 the Department was working on renewals received on 29 July 2026, about 12 weeks: your employer applies at least that early. If your family will apply, ask that your new contract runs at least a year past the day they would arrive (Stage 3, Step 4).

Your pay at renewal. Your pay must meet the floor in force on the day. Permit holders in the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland's survey said some permits were not renewed "due to new salary levels". The Journal, an Irish news site, reported in June 2026 renewals refused because a nursing home group had fallen below 50:50. Ask your employer, three months before, whether both are in order.

Your IRP card each year

Renew your registration and your residence card (the IRP card) "at least one month before the expiry date". If your renewal is in before your card expires, you can keep working on its conditions "for a maximum of 12 weeks". If your card expires before you apply, you are "out of permission and therefore not permitted to remain or work in the State". RTÉ, Ireland's national broadcaster, reported in July 2026 that a carer in the west of Ireland was out of work when her 12 weeks ran out before her renewal was decided. Apply as early as the page allows.

Changing employer, or losing the job

After nine months, a new permit can be applied for you with a new employer "within the type of employment for which they have been granted a permit (identified by its 4 digit SOC code)", with no new advert. It is a new application, with its fee, and the new employer must meet the 50:50 rule. You start "within one month of the new permit being issued". "The maximum number of applications for change of employer that may be granted to a permit holder has been set at three." The job code on your permit decides which jobs you can move to: read it.

If you are made redundant, that is, your job is cut, tell the Employment Permits Section "within 4 weeks of the date of dismissal". You "will have up to 6 months from the date of dismissal by reason of redundancy to seek alternative employment". If the job ends for any reason, the Department must be told and the permit returned within 4 weeks.

Your family

After 12 months of work. Your spouse, civil partner or de facto partner (a partner you live with as a couple), and your children under 18, can apply to join you after you have worked legally in Ireland for one year. Your spouse can apply to join you if your pay before tax was "a gross income in excess of €30,000 in the previous year, with the expectation that this level of income will be maintained" (about ₦44.9 million). This is read from your "employment detail summaries from Revenue for the previous year". A full year at €32,691 is above that figure; a year you started partway through may not be (Part 1). Ask the Irish Immigration Service which year it reads before your spouse applies. For your children, "Your gross salary will need to be higher than the relevant figure": €50,200 for one child, €60,200 for two, €70,100 for three. The permit's pay is below all three. "Only the income of one sponsor will be considered." The Irish Immigration Service decides. The Government's answer to Ireland's parliament (the Dáil) of 28 July 2026: "the review concluded that the levels of income thresholds for lower paid sponsors should be considered in the context of the sustainability of wage growth."

What they apply with. A long-stay family visa from Nigeria (the join family visa). They need their passports "valid for at least 12 months", two photographs, your Revenue employment summary for the year before, "3 recent consecutive payslips", and your contract "of at least 1 year from your proposed date of entry" (ask for it when you sign: Stage 3, Step 4). They also need six months of your bank statements and theirs, and Nigerian birth and marriage certificates "attested/apostilled as genuine by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs" (check them before Stage 2: Part 1). For housing: "Proof of suitable accommodation is not required at the initial point of application, but the decision-maker may request this at a later stage. If the sponsor does not provide proof of suitable accommodation within 6 months of it being requested, the application may be refused." Many who arrive share a room at first (Stage 7, Step 6): find the home your family will live in before they apply. If you rent, "the tenancy must be registered with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB)", the Irish rent board, with its letter and a housing form (the ACCOM1 form). "Where children are concerned, there must not be any unrelated adults residing at the property." Their visa fee is the same table as yours, €60 or €100 each, and €300 each at registration "if applicable".

How long. "You can expect that your application will be dealt with within 12 months of receipt of all required documentation." In 2025, "the average processing time for all types of Join Family visa applications was 113 days".

Your spouse's work. If your spouse is granted, they are registered on the spouse's stamp (Stamp 1G): "Permitted to work in the State without the requirement to obtain an employment permit", not self-employed, renewed every year.

Stamp 4, and after

Stamp 4 lets you work without a permit, and you renew it each year. Its time: 57 months on the Immigration Service's Stamp 4 page; five years on its stamps page and on the Department's; plan on five. The Irish Immigration Service's Stamp 4 page (updated 25 February 2026): "Upon completion of 57 months from commencement of employment in the State on the basis of: (iv) General Employment Permits", counted from your Revenue "Employment Detail Summary". Its stamps page: "With a valid employment permit for 5 years". The Department's work permit page: "After 5 years, the applicant may apply to the Dept Of Justice (Immigration Service Delivery (ISD) for long term residency", and its page Who needs an employment permit?: "If you have held valid employment permits for a consecutive period of five years or more". If anyone tells you a care worker gets permanent residence "after 4 years", it is wrong.

Part 4. What can stop you

Your deadlines

Write each date down the day it comes.

Before you fly

Your first weeks

The years after

What stops people, in the order you meet it

An employer that does not sponsor. Many adverts are closed to applicants from outside the EU, because the employer will not apply for a permit. Read the last lines of each advert first, apply to many, and ask "will you apply for my General Employment Permit?" in your first message (Stage 2).

A fee asked of you. Where your employer applied, it may not take back the permit fee (the Department's page); whoever applies, get it in writing that the fee will never be deducted. Your employer may not take back the cost of recruiting you or travel costs it paid you, and a licensed Irish agency must never charge you; many still pay. You pay nobody for a job or a place. The only permit fee is the Department's, paid on its online permit site (Employment Permits Online), and when your employer applies, the employer pays it. Pay the visa fee only at the visa centre. Check the offer by phone, or by email from your own address, on the number or the email address on the employer's own website, not the one in the message. Check the agency on the list of Ireland's work rights office (the WRC) and on the Ministry of Labour's list (Stage 3).

A title the permit does not cover. A senior carer or team leader outside disability services, or a carer employed by a family. Ask whether the employer has a health care assistant or care worker post; the duties on the application must be that job's duties (Part 1).

The employer's 50:50 count. The permit "will not issue unless at the time of application at least 50% of the employees in a firm are EEA nationals", and the ratio "is calculated based on all employees of an employer regardless of their role". The checklist counts "EEA and/or Swiss Nationals/UK nationals (including Irish)". In plain words, at least half of all the employer's staff must be Irish, British, Swiss, or citizens of the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway. The Journal, an Irish news site, reported renewals refused for it in 2026. Ask in writing before you sign (Stage 3).

Pay below the floor. At least €32,691 a year in basic pay for 39 hours. On fewer hours the yearly figure stays the same, so the hourly rate is higher, and a contract with no fixed hours does not show it. A contract below it gets no permit (Stage 3).

The cap on permits (the quota), for a care worker or home carer. 1,495 permits from 13 May 2026, shared. No page says how many are used. The Minister's answer of 10 April 2025 says health care assistants are "not subject to a quota": ask which job code (SOC code) the employer will enter (Stage 3, question 2).

The visa wait. The page says about 8 weeks; people who applied in 2025 and 2026 report 16 weeks and more. Apply as soon as your travel date is within 3 months, inside the permit's six months, and keep your job (Stage 5).

A refused visa. For a missing paper, a paper that cannot be checked, or a deception. Every paper original and checkable, every large sum paid in explained, every earlier refusal declared. If your refusal letter allows an appeal: within 2 months, answering each reason (Stage 5).

A first payslip at 40%. Your Irish tax number (PPS number) and your job on Revenue's myAccount before your first payday (Stage 7).

Housing tied to the job. Care workers in the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland's survey reported deductions and threats over the employer's housing, and a move of employer means a move of house. Keep its cost in writing, and know the rules of the Irish rent board (the RTB) before you pay a deposit anywhere (Stage 7).

No Level 5 by the renewal. Start the course in your first year, or agree the clinical lead's declaration with your employer early (Stage 9).

A residence card that expires. Renew your IRP card at least a month before; after the expiry you may not work (Stage 9).

Your children. The permit's pay does not reach the income for a child. Decide this before you start (Part 1).

Part 5. If you already did some of this

Start at the first stage you have not finished.

You hold a care certificate and two years of letters. Check your passport (Stage 1, Step 1), then Stage 1, Step 2: download your comparison letter (NARIC Ireland's free letter that says what your certificate equals in Ireland), then Stage 2.

You have experience and no certificate. Start at Stage 1. Apply at Stage 2 to employers that ask for experience, and plan your Level 5 care certificate for your first year in Ireland (Stage 9).

You hold a NARIC Ireland statement. Check your passport (Stage 1, Step 1), then Stage 1, Step 3, then Stage 2.

You hold an IELTS or other English result. The permit and the visa do not ask for it. Name it in your CV if an advert asks for English at a level (Part 1).

You are a registered nurse. Go to the Ireland nurse guide, opens in a new tab.

You hold a job offer. Start at Stage 3: check it and ask your ten questions before you sign.

You have signed a contract. Start at Stage 4: find the advert on JobsIreland and send your papers to the employer.

Your employer has applied for your permit. You are in Stage 4, Step 3: answer any request within 28 days, and get your visa papers ready now.

You hold your permit. Start at Stage 5 now: your six months to start work are running, and you apply for the visa as soon as your travel date is within 3 months.

You have lodged your visa. You have handed in your visa papers, so you are in Stage 5, Step 4: follow the Embassy's weekly lists, buy your insurance, and keep your job.

You hold your visa. Start at Stage 6: read its Remarks line before you book.

You are in Ireland. Register within 90 days of landing (Stage 7), then get your Irish tax number (PPS number) and register your job on Revenue's myAccount before your first payday.

You are in Ireland on another permission (a student or a spouse). This guide is written for a person coming from Nigeria. A change of permission inside Ireland is the Irish Immigration Service's question, with your own stamp: ask it on the Customer Service Portal before you sign anything.

Part 6. The time, stage by stage

• Stage 1, your papers: a new passport 42 days after enrolment; a re-issue 21 days; NARIC Ireland's letter on your certificate the same day; your Police Character Certificate 5 to 7 working days, when your employer asks.
• Stage 2, the employer: as long as it takes an employer to say yes. This is the stage that decides your start: apply to many.
• Stage 3, the offer: a week for your checks and the employer's written answers.
• Stage 4, the advert and the permit: up to 28 days of advert; the application at least 12 weeks before your start; about five weeks in the queue on 19 October 2026, then the decision; 28 days to answer a question; 28 days to ask for a review.
• Stage 5, the visa: about 8 weeks by the Irish Immigration Service's page; the Embassy recommends twelve weeks; people report 16 weeks and more in 2025 and 2026.
• Stage 6, travel: within the visa's dates and the permit's six months.
• Stage 7, your first weeks: registered within 90 days; the residence card (IRP card) within 10 working days; the Irish police check (Garda vetting) link lasts 30 days. In a nursing home you do training, not care work, until the result is in (Nursing Homes Ireland, Stage 7). The HSE's guide says up to two months to its staff's first pay.
• Stage 8, your first payslip: your core terms within 5 days, the rest within a month.
• Stage 9, the years after: 9 months with your first employer; the Level 5 and the renewal at two years; your residence card every year; family after 12 months, then up to 12 months to decide (113 days on average in 2025). Stamp 4, to work without a permit: 57 months on the Immigration Service's Stamp 4 page; five years on its stamps page and on the Department's; plan on five.

To your flight: about four months from the yes by the official pages, about six months or more by the 2025 and 2026 reports.

Part 7. The money, all of it

Every fee in the order you meet it, for you alone, with your employer applying for your permit.

On your own application. Add the permit fee, €1,000 (about ₦1.50 million): about ₦2.04 million to ₦2.10 million in all, or ₦2.14 million to ₦2.20 million with a new passport.

Paying from Nigeria. The visa fee is paid in naira at the visa centre, by card (POS), QR code or cash, and VFS's service charge by debit or credit card when you book online. Two fees are in euro: your €300 registration in Ireland ("by credit or debit card only") and, on your own application, the €1,000 permit fee (the permit application asks for card details). Use a card in your own name that pays in euro. If your naira card cannot pay €300 abroad in one payment, ask your bank before you travel for a card on a domiciliary (foreign currency) account, or ask your employer how its new staff pay. Before the day, ask your bank how much your card can pay abroad in one payment, because the €300 (or the €1,000 on your own application) must go through in one go; a small test payment does not show the limit.

What the total leaves out. VFS's service charge (₦104,849) and the courier (a visa applicant wrote online in July 2025 that the courier came to about ₦25,000); the Police Character Certificate's fee; your trip to the visa centre; your photographs, copies and translations; your insurance; your flight; and your first weeks in Ireland. The HSE's guide puts the money to get set up at "in the region of €4000" (about ₦5.99 million), with a deposit of at most one month's rent and one month in advance. Your employer's housing, flight or first rent, where it pays them, comes off this.

What your employer may not take back from you. Where your employer applied, the permit fee (€1,000) and a renewal's (€1,500) (the Department's page); whoever applies, get it in writing that the fee will never be deducted. The cost of recruiting you, and any travel costs it paid you (Part 1, The money).

In Ireland, later. A visit to a GP, about €45 to €65; your Level 5 course, if your employer does not pay and the college charges you; renewing your residence card each year; a renewal of your permit, if you apply yourself.

For each family member (after your 12 months). The visa fee, ₦91,840 (€60), or ₦153,067 (€100) if it is issued multi-entry (VFS's figures, 26 October 2026), and €300 (about ₦449,100) at registration "if applicable".

What you earn. At least €32,691 a year (about ₦48.9 million), about €2,311 a month in your hand (about ₦3.46 million) on 2026's rates (Stage 8).

The guide's date is 14 October 2026. Every fee, date and rule in it comes from the official page that sets it, or is given in the named body's own words; reports from people who did it are marked as theirs.

Where your employer applied, it may not take back the permit fee (the Department's page); whoever applies, get it in writing that the fee will never be deducted. Your employer may not take back the cost of recruiting you or travel costs it paid you, and a licensed Irish agency must never charge you. "Your employer cannot deduct recruitment expenses from your pay or retain your personal documents." (Citizens Information). A licensed Irish agency must state "that you will never charge a candidate a fee" (the Workplace Relations Commission).