Employment rights on a work permit in Ireland

Your right to be paid properly, to rest, to take leave and to be treated fairly comes from the employment Acts, and those Acts apply to everyone who works here. They do not ask what stamp is in your passport. A General Employment Permit, a Critical Skills Employment Permit, a Stamp 1G or a Stamp 4 changes how you may work and for whom. It does not change what your employer owes you once you are working.

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

What the permit does and does not change

The permit, or the stamp, decides three things: whether you can work at all, whether you are tied to one employer, and for how long. Everything after that is ordinary Irish employment law.

The minimum salary on a permit sits above the statutory minimum wage. If your contract pays less than the figure on your permit, that is both an employment question (you may be owed the difference under your contract) and a permit question (the permit was granted on the basis of that salary). StampWise explains the permit side; the WRC handles the pay side.

The same minimum wage

The National Minimum Wage Act 2000 applies to you from your first hour. The rates since 1 January 2026 are:

The rate is checked over a pay reference period of up to one month: your gross pay for the period, divided by the hours you worked, must reach the rate for your age. An employer who provides board or lodging may count a fixed allowance set by the Minister towards the minimum wage, and nothing else: not tips, not a uniform, not training, and never the cost of your permit. You can ask in writing for a statement of your average hourly rate for any pay reference period in the last twelve months, and it must be given within four weeks. The minimum wage checker works out your rate and any shortfall.

If you are placed by an agency, the Protection of Employees (Temporary Agency Work) Act 2012 gives you the hirer's basic pay and conditions from day one. The agency is your employer for pay, leave and notice. An agency must be licensed and cannot charge you for finding you work.

Hours, breaks and rest

The Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 sets a 48-hour maximum working week, averaged over four months (six in some sectors, including security and hospitality). You are entitled to 11 consecutive hours' rest in every 24, a 24-hour rest period in every seven days, a 15-minute break after 4.5 hours and a 30-minute break after 6 hours. Breaks are unpaid unless your contract says otherwise. Sunday work must be recognised by a premium, an allowance, time off or a higher rate, unless your pay already takes Sunday into account.

Your employer must keep records of your hours. If it does not, and you make a working-time complaint, the WRC can expect the employer to disprove your account rather than the other way round. Keep your own note of start and finish times from the first week.

Annual leave and public holidays

Annual leave is the greatest of: four working weeks where you worked at least 1,365 hours in the leave year; one third of a working week for each calendar month in which you worked at least 117 hours; or 8% of the hours you worked, up to four working weeks. Leave keeps accruing while you are on sick leave or maternity leave. When you leave a job, any leave you have accrued and not taken is paid in your final pay.

There are ten public holidays in 2026: 1 January, 2 February, 17 March, 6 April, 4 May, 1 June, 3 August, 26 October, 25 December and 26 December. If you are part-time you qualify for a public holiday once you have worked at least 40 hours in the five weeks before it. The employer chooses one of four options: a paid day off on the day, a paid day off within a month, an extra day of annual leave, or an extra day's pay. If you are not normally rostered on the day, you are owed one fifth of your normal weekly pay for it. The annual leave calculator applies all three methods and the public holidays to your own hours.

Sick pay, maternity and other leave

Under the Sick Leave Act 2022 you are entitled to 5 days' statutory sick pay a year at 70% of your pay, capped at €110 a day, once you have 13 weeks' service, with a medical certificate from the first day. After that, Illness Benefit from the Department of Social Protection is €254 a week in 2026, subject to your PRSI record, with three waiting days. PRSI paid on a work permit counts.

Maternity leave is 26 weeks, with Maternity Benefit of €299 a week in 2026 where your PRSI record qualifies, plus 16 further unpaid weeks. Paternity leave is two weeks, parent's leave is nine weeks for each parent in the child's first two years, and parental leave is 26 unpaid weeks per child before the twelfth birthday. None of these depends on nationality. The changing employer guide covers what happens to leave if you move jobs.

Notice, redundancy and dismissal

After 13 weeks' service your employer owes you notice under the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Acts 1973 to 2005: one week if you have under two years' service, two weeks from two years, four from five, six from ten and eight from fifteen. You owe one week. A contract can lengthen these periods but never shorten them.

After 104 weeks' continuous service you qualify for statutory redundancy if your job goes: two weeks' pay for every year plus one further week, with weekly pay capped at €600, free of tax, USC and PRSI. The redundancy calculator works out the sum.

After 12 months' service you can claim unfair dismissal at the WRC, and there is no minimum service at all where the dismissal is for pregnancy, taking statutory leave, trade union membership, a protected disclosure or exercising a statutory right. The employer must show the dismissal was fair and that it followed a fair procedure. Compensation is for your financial loss, up to 104 weeks' pay. A dismissal shortly after you asked about your pay, your hours or your permit may be one the WRC looks at closely, but it is never automatically unfair; the facts decide it.

What your employer cannot do

Some practices appear again and again in complaints from permit holders. None of them is lawful.

• Holding your passport, permit or residence card. Your documents are yours. The employment permits legislation makes it an offence for an employer to retain them.
• Charging you for the permit. The employer pays the permit fee and cannot recover it, or recruitment costs, from your wages. A deduction like this may be an unlawful deduction under the Payment of Wages Act 1991, and a WRC complaint can recover it.
• Deductions without a basis. A deduction must be required by law, allowed by your contract and fair and reasonable, agreed by you in writing, or to recover an overpayment. A deduction for a till shortage or breakage needs a week's written notice and cannot exceed the loss.
• No payslip. You must get a written statement of your gross pay and every deduction each time you are paid.
• No written terms. The core terms (names, address, start date, pay, hours, place of work, job title, probation) must be in writing within 5 days, and the rest within 1 month. A missing statement can bring up to four weeks' pay at the WRC. Use the contract checker to see what is missing.
• Threatening your status. Telling you that a complaint will cost you your permit is not a lawful reason to withdraw it. Penalising you for using a statutory right is itself something the WRC can act on.

If your written terms are not in a language you read well, you are entitled to understand what you are signing. A certified translation of a contract or a payslip can be ordered from an online service such as Translayte (an affiliate link: EmploymentWise may earn a commission if you order, at no cost to you). Nothing on this site requires a translation; it is simply where some readers have gone.

Students on Stamp 2

If you are an international student on a Stamp 2 permission you can work up to 20 hours a week during term and up to 40 hours a week in the holiday periods the immigration rules define. That limit is an immigration rule, not an employment rule, and StampWise explains it. While you are working, every right above applies in full: the minimum wage for your age, breaks, annual leave in proportion to your hours, public holidays once you qualify, and a payslip. "Part time" does not mean fewer rights; the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001 gives you the same treatment, pro rata, as a comparable full-time colleague.

Many students take work through agencies or in hospitality. The same rules on tips apply to you as to anyone else: since 1 December 2022, electronic tips must be distributed fairly, the tips policy must be displayed, and tips cannot be counted towards your wages.

Where to get help

The WRC Infoline is 0818 80 80 90 and the WRC's own pages explain each Act. A complaint is made online, with no fee, within six months of what happened; the deadline checker gives you the date. The Migrant Rights Centre Ireland advises migrant workers on employment and immigration questions together and has brought many of the cases that settled how the law treats permit holders. A union represents its members at the WRC at no charge, and joining one is your right whatever your permit; see which union covers your sector. Terms used here are explained in the glossary.

Sector pages on this site cover work that permit holders often do: healthcare assistants and home carers, contract cleaning, security, childcare and au pairs.

Where this leaves you

Your permit decides whether you can work and for whom. Everything else is the same as for any Irish worker: the minimum wage for your age, the 48-hour week, four weeks' leave, ten public holidays, sick pay after 13 weeks, notice, redundancy and the WRC. Start with your written terms. The contract checker tells you which statutory items are missing, which Act requires each, and what the WRC can do if they are never given. For the permit itself, StampWise covers each permit type, the salary thresholds and the rules on changing employer.