Good morning,
Well, as you are not a EU citizen, you can get either a work authorization (or work visa, if you are from a visa-requiring country) or a work permit. The work authorization is the better option as it is more easily accessed & has fewer rules/regulations atttached, but you must be in a very select career group to apply:
Work Authorization (WA) is basically given to highly-skilled people from a particular opening in the Irish job market that has been deemed understaffed, namely engineers, doctors, nurses, IT consultants (this choice very select, you need specific qualifications), town planners, etc..
- They need a job offer from an Irish employer and can apply in their home country before coming over.
- The WA is valid for 2 years & is renewable. Working on a WA you can change employers as long as you stay within the same sector of work, ie a doctor in Dublin moving to work as a doctor in Cork.
- Check out
www.entemp.ie for full details
A Work Permit (WP) is much more difficult to get:
- First you have to get an Irish employer to offer you a job and to apply for the WP for you (you cannot apply on your own behalf).
- The job that is open must first be offered to everyone in Ireland, then the EU before it can be offered to you. The employer does this by registering the vacancy with FAS (the Irish employment people) for 4 weeks so that every eligible Irish citizen and every eligible EU citizen has a chance to get the job before you. This is to ensure that non-nationals are not being brought into the country to work when an available Irish/EU person can do the job instead.
- Once no other person in the entire country/EU has applied for the job opening, it can then be offered to you.
- The employer submits an application form & pays for the permit (currently 500.00 Euro per year)
- It takes 8-10 weeks for the application to be processed and you cannot work while you are waiting.
- The permit will be sent to your employer, you must then present yourself with the permit to the immigration department at your local Garda station or at the national immigration dept in Dublin to have you details listed, passport stamped and you get a small, immigration id card (credit card size). It is vital that you register with the Garda when you arrive as you need the passport stamp to renew your passport next year.
- You cannot change jobs on the same WP as one permit is given for your name per employer. If you want to change jobs, you must get a new permit for that new employer.
- All correspondence regarding your WP is between your employer and the government.
Check out all above on the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE) website
www.entemp.ie
It has been announced recently that a new immigration department will be introduced in Ireland to deal with all issues of work permits/authorizations, citizenship, asylum etc called the Irish Naturalization and Immigration Service (INIS) but I'm not sure when that is offically starting. So, right now, all work pemit info is on the DETE website and citizenship/naturalization is on www,justice.ie
Good luck,
Maria
