Hiring Filipino care staff in Ireland: the General Employment Permit route.

Because the allocation is quota-limited, timing matters more than volume. We plan cohorts against remaining headroom rather than submitting speculative orders.

Confirm the occupation is on DETE’s eligible list before anything else. Some roles cannot be filled through an employment permit at any salary, and that is the cheapest thing to discover first.

The 50:50 rule

DETE will not issue permits where more than half your workforce is non-EEA. Two things are routinely miscounted:

• Staff holding Stamp 4 or Irish citizenship count on the compliant side of the ratio, regardless of where they were born.
• UK citizens count on the compliant side too.

Many operators have more headroom than they assume. It is worth working out before you spend anything, and we will talk it through with you.

The salary floor

For healthcare assistants and home carers the floor is €32,691 a year — €16.12 an hour on a 39-hour week, basic pay only, excluding overtime, premiums and allowances. Note that the standard General Employment Permit floor is higher at €36,605; the care rate is a sector-specific concession rather than a general one.

Care worker and home carer permits are quota-limited. The current pool is 1,495 permits, running from 13 May 2026 under S.I. 213/2026.

There is no public counter. DETE publishes the maximum, not the consumption, and its statistics are not broken down by occupation. The only reliable signal is a retrospective “quota filled” notice — which arrives after the fact.

The risk to understand

The pool can fill during your 28 consecutive days of advertising. Applications submitted while awaiting processing when a quota exhausts are rejected — not queued for the next tranche. The advertising period is therefore a window of exposure, not a safe holding pattern.

Check the quota position for your occupation before you commit, and do not delay the start of the Labour Market Needs Test — every week of hesitation is a week of exposure.

28 consecutive days of advertising across JobsIreland.ie, EURES, and at least one commercial platform. The advertisement must genuinely describe the role, salary and conditions — a placeholder advertisement is a failed test.

• Record every application received.
• Interview all candidates meeting the minimum requirements.
• Document in writing the reason for not progressing each Irish or EEA applicant.
• Retain everything for at least two years.

DETE can audit after the permit issues. Failure risks permit revocation and a referral to the Workplace Relations Commission, so the records matter as much as the advertising.

We build your shortlist in parallel with the 28 consecutive days, so the test costs your team no calendar time. Your Philippine accreditation opens in the same window — it starts on your signature, not on the permit — so the 28 consecutive days carry two workstreams instead of one.

You apply through DETE’s EPOS portal. The fee is €1,000 for a permit of up to 24 months, paid by you — it cannot be charged to the worker.

Processing time moves with demand, so we do not quote a figure. Check DETE’s current processing dates for the live position.

Philippine law requires every overseas worker to be deployed through an agency licensed by the Department of Migrant Workers. Without that, the worker cannot obtain the Overseas Employment Certificate that permits them to leave the country for work — regardless of which Irish permit is held. This is the step that surprises employers most, because it sits entirely outside Irish jurisdiction.

A DMW licence can only be held by a Filipino sole proprietor or partnership, or by a corporation at least 75% Filipino-owned and controlled. That is a matter of Philippine corporate law, and it is why non-Filipino agencies must work through a licensed Philippine partner.

Sofielle holds that licence directly — Licence No. DMW-043-LB-07242026-PL. There is no intermediary agency between you and the licence.

Accreditation attaches to you

Employer accreditation attaches to you as the foreign principal and is processed through the licensed agency. It is not something a recruiter holds on your behalf, and it does not transfer between agencies.

We prepare your accreditation and hand-deliver it in person to the Migrant Workers Office. Our European office is in London.

Accreditation runs in parallel with your Labour Market Needs Test — not after the permit

This is the sequencing decision that decides whether your first cohort lands in six to eight months or in ten. Accreditation does not wait for the outcome of your advertising, and it does not wait for DETE.

Required because the Philippines is a visa-required nationality. A tourist visa cannot be converted in-country, so this stage cannot be shortcut or reordered.

Since September 2022, applications are lodged through VFS Philippines, with consular decisions made by the Irish Embassy Manila. Typically 4 to 8 weeks, though the decision and its timing rest with the Embassy — check its current published times rather than treating any figure as a commitment.

IRP registration

The worker must register their immigration permission with Immigration Service Delivery within 90 days of arrival. Since 13 January 2025, all first-time registration happens at the Registration Office, Burgh Quay, Dublin — Garda stations no longer do it. A worker based outside Dublin therefore travels to Dublin for this appointment, which is worth rostering for.

• €300 fee, paid by card at the appointment.
• Booking is free and must be done by the worker through their own ISD account.
• Third-party booking sites charging a fee are not legitimate — warn the worker before they arrive.
• The card arrives by post in about 10 working days.

See Immigration Service Delivery for the current process.

Stamp 1 and the renewal mismatch

Registration is usually valid for 12 months while a General Employment Permit runs for 24, so the worker renews their registration part-way through the permit. Diary both expiry dates at onboarding — they do not move together, and a lapsed registration is the employer’s problem as much as the worker’s.

PPS number

A PPS number cannot be applied for before arrival. You can submit a third-party application on the worker’s behalf with a signed consent form. Allocation centres are spread nationwide, so unlike the IRP appointment this is a half-day locally rather than a trip to Dublin.

The payroll trap

This is the single most useful thing on this page, because it is where good placements sour over money that was never actually lost:

• Without a PPS number, all pay is taxed at 40% with no credits, from the very first payslip.
• With a PPS number but the job not yet registered, weeks one to four get the single person's rate band with everything above it taxed at 40%; from week five it is 40% on all pay.
• Revenue counts those weeks from the start date, not from when the number arrives — so delay costs the worker real money immediately.
• Emergency USC applies on top.

The step you cannot do for them

The worker must register their first Irish job themselves through Revenue’s myAccount, and they cannot do it without your Tax Registration Number. Put it in the onboarding pack in writing on day one — see Revenue’s guidance on starting your first job.

We plan arrival week into the placement, and we are there for it — we meet workers at the airport, get them to where they are staying, and stay reachable through the first days rather than handing over at the gate.

Early departures are rarely about the work. They are about a first payslip that made no sense, a form nobody explained, or three months of not knowing anyone. All of that is preventable, and none of it prevents itself.

What we do not do is act for the worker. Immigration registration, the PPS application and opening a bank account are theirs to complete — our part is making sure they arrive knowing exactly what each one involves.

QQI Level 5 in Healthcare Support is the Irish standard for care assistant roles. HIQA may review staff qualifications at inspection, and managers are accountable for team competency — so this is an inspection and quality matter for you, not a paperwork formality.

Our candidates hold TESDA Caregiving NC II, the Philippine national competency standard for caregiving, covering patient transfers, vital signs, infection control and activities of daily living. That programme covers substantially the same competencies as QQI Level 5 in Healthcare Support.

We say “covering substantially the same competencies” deliberately, and not “equivalent”. No formal equivalence has been established between the two awards, and any agency telling you otherwise is overstating the position.

Enrolment and completion sit with you and the worker. We make sure candidates know the pathway applies before they accept an offer, so it is not a surprise on arrival.

Six stages from first call to first shift. Two of them are yours by law and no agency can take them off you — we have marked those plainly rather than implying otherwise.

The two stages marked as yours are your legal obligations, not gaps in our service. Any agency offering to hold them for you is offering something it cannot lawfully deliver.

The permit fee cannot be charged to the worker. Many employers also choose to reimburse the €300 registration fee, though that is a matter for you.

All recruitment costs are employer-borne. We never charge a worker a recruitment, placement or processing fee at any stage, and nothing is recovered from wages.