Changing employer on a work permit in Ireland: the employment side

Changing employer on an employment permit has two sides that run at the same time. The permit side is the application to move: who applies, when you qualify, what happens to the old permit. The employment side is the ordinary business of leaving one job and starting another: notice, final pay, holiday pay, your tax record, and what you can do if the job ends before you chose to leave.

This guide is the employment side. Your employment rights are the same as an Irish worker's: StampWise covers the permit itself.

The nine-month rule, briefly

The Employment Permits Act 2024 commenced on 2 September 2024. Among other changes it allows a General Employment Permit or Critical Skills Employment Permit holder to apply for a change of employer after nine months with the first employer, where before a new permit was generally needed for each move. The new employer makes the application, the job must still meet the permit's conditions, and you must not start with the new employer until the change is granted.

The detail of who qualifies, which permits are included, the fee and the processing time is a permit matter and changes with Department practice. StampWise keeps it current. What follows assumes you have checked that side and are now looking at what your current employer owes you, and what you owe them.

The notice you owe

Under the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Acts 1973 to 2005 an employee with at least 13 weeks' service owes the employer one week's notice. Your contract can require more, and contracts for permit roles often do: a month is common, and three months is not unusual in Critical Skills roles. A contract can lengthen the statutory minimum but never shorten it.

Give your notice in writing, dated, and keep a copy. Name the last day you intend to work. If the contract requires a month and you give a week, the employer cannot force you to stay, but it could in principle claim for any loss your early departure caused, and it will not owe you pay for the days you did not work. Most employers, in practice, agree an earlier date or accept that you work out the contractual period.

Either side can agree to waive notice or accept pay in lieu. If the employer tells you not to work your notice, you are still owed the pay for it. The notice calculator gives you both the statutory and contractual figure and the date your notice ends.

Timing matters more for you than for an Irish worker, because you cannot begin the new job until the new permit issues. Many people agree a leaving date with the old employer that allows for the Department's processing time, or agree to extend the notice period if the decision is slow. Both are allowed; a date agreed in writing is the safest.

What you are owed when you leave

Your final payslip should contain:

• Pay to your last day, including any overtime or Sunday premium owed.
• Annual leave accrued and not taken. Under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, untaken leave is paid on cessation. Leave accrues at the greatest of four weeks for 1,365 hours in the leave year, one third of a week for each month of at least 117 hours, or 8% of hours worked. The annual leave calculator works out the balance.
• A public holiday within a week of leaving. If a public holiday falls in the week after your employment ends and you worked the four weeks before it, you may be owed a day's pay for it.
• Notice pay, if the employer waived your notice or paid in lieu.
• Any expenses, bonus or commission your contract makes payable on leaving.

If any of this is missing, the route is a Payment of Wages Act 1991 complaint to the WRC within six months of the date it should have been paid. There is no fee. The deadline checker gives you the date.

What you are not owed, unless the contract says so, is a payment for a permit fee you did not pay (the employer pays it and cannot recover it from you) or any "training bond" that was not agreed in writing before the training. A deduction from your final pay to cover the cost of the permit, recruitment or relocation may be an unlawful deduction unless it was agreed by you in writing in advance and is fair and reasonable.

Your tax record: the employment detail summary

The P45 no longer exists. When you leave, the employer reports your leaving date to Revenue through payroll. Your record of pay and tax for the year is your employment detail summary, which you can view and download in Revenue's myAccount. Your new employer registers your new employment with Revenue and your tax credits move with you. Check the summary after your final payslip: it is the document a mortgage lender, the Department of Social Protection or a future employer will ask for, and it is also the easiest proof of your earnings if a dispute about final pay ever goes to the WRC.

Your PRSI contributions continue across the move and count towards Illness Benefit, Maternity Benefit and Jobseeker's Benefit in the ordinary way.

Leave and service across the move

Service does not carry across employers. Your 13 weeks for notice, 12 months for unfair dismissal and 104 weeks for redundancy all start again with the new employer. So do the 13 weeks for statutory sick pay and the six months before you can ask for remote working.

Annual leave does not transfer either: the old employer pays out what you accrued, and you start accruing again. If you are planning maternity, paternity or parent's leave around a move, Maternity Benefit and the other benefits depend on your PRSI record rather than on service with one employer, but the leave itself has notice rules you give to whichever employer you are with at the time. The leave planner sets out the dates.

Redundancy on a Critical Skills permit

A permit holder can be made redundant like anyone else. The job must genuinely go, selection must be fair, and the Redundancy Payments Acts 1967 to 2014 apply: after 104 weeks' continuous service you are owed two weeks' pay for every year of service plus one further week, with weekly pay capped at €600, free of tax, USC and PRSI. Complete years count in full and extra days count as a fraction of a year. The redundancy calculator does the arithmetic. If the employer is insolvent and cannot pay, the Department of Social Protection pays the statutory sum from the Social Insurance Fund.

The permit side is separate. A Critical Skills permit holder who is made redundant must notify the Department of the redundancy within a set period and then has a window in which to find a new employer and apply for a new permit, without having to leave the State. The notification is a permit step, not an employment step, and the time limit is short; StampWise explains the form and the window. On the employment side, notice still applies (one to eight weeks by service), the statutory sum is still owed, and any ex gratia payment on top is taxed under the Revenue exemptions.

If the redundancy does not look genuine, for example if your job is advertised again within weeks, or you were selected while colleagues doing the same work were kept, the WRC can look at whether it was a dismissal dressed as a redundancy. That is an unfair dismissal complaint, within six months.

Jobseeker's Benefit depends on your PRSI record; whether your permission allows you to claim it while you look for new work is an immigration question for StampWise.

If you are dismissed

The Unfair Dismissals Acts 1977 to 2015 apply to permit holders in full. With 12 months' service you can claim; with less, you can still claim where the dismissal is wholly or mainly for pregnancy, taking statutory leave, trade union membership, a protected disclosure or exercising a statutory right. The employer must show a fair reason (capability, conduct, redundancy, a statutory restriction, or other substantial grounds) and a fair procedure under the WRC Code of Practice: the allegation and the evidence given to you, a hearing, the right to be accompanied, a proportionate sanction and an appeal. Compensation is for financial loss, up to 104 weeks' pay, and you are expected to look for work and keep a record of it.

A dismissal that follows closely on a request to change employer, or on a question about your pay, is not automatically unfair, but the timing is something an adjudicator will want explained. Keep the emails.

A complaint can be lodged online from anywhere and a hearing can be attended remotely. Leaving the State does not end a complaint already made. The unfair dismissal check walks through the threshold and the clock.

Non-compete and notice clauses

Some permit contracts contain a non-compete clause. It is enforceable only if it is reasonable in time, area and scope and protects a legitimate business interest; a clause that would stop you working in your field anywhere in Ireland for a year is one a court would look at hard. Garden leave (being paid to stay at home during notice) needs a contractual clause. Neither affects the permit application, but a long notice or garden-leave period affects the date you can start, so read the contract before the new employer applies. The non-compete guide covers the test.

Where this leaves you

A change of employer on a permit is a permit application and an ordinary resignation running side by side. The permit application decides when you may start. Your contract and the Minimum Notice Acts decide what notice you owe; the Working Time Act decides the leave you are paid out; the Payment of Wages Act gives you the WRC if any of it is missing. Begin with the notice calculator: it gives you the statutory and contractual notice, the date it ends, and how pay in lieu works, so you can agree a leaving date that fits the permit timeline. For the permit side, including the nine-month rule and the redundancy notification on a Critical Skills permit, see StampWise. The work permit rights guide covers what every permit holder is owed while in the job.