Ireland’s Immigration Service Delivery (ISD) quietly introduced an operational change on 14 May 2026: the Department will no longer send acknowledgement letters when applicants post additional paperwork or status-update queries. The move is aimed at freeing staff to focus on decision-making rather than clerical confirmations. ISD says the volume of mail has grown sharply on the back of record employment-permit and residence-permission demand; processing times for some categories now exceed 12 weeks. By eliminating acknowledgement letters the agency expects to divert the equivalent of six full-time staff back to frontline casework, trimming at least two weeks from standard processing times by year-end. Applicants are still free to send original documents by registered post; however, proof of delivery will now rest entirely on the postal tracking number rather than an ISD receipt. The Department “strongly recommends” that most follow-up material be uploaded via the online Customer Service Portal, where it can be matched automatically to case files. For mobility managers the change removes a paper trail that many companies relied on for audit purposes—a potential headache for regulated sectors that must evidence right-to-work checks. Advisers are urging employers to download time-stamped portal screenshots and to build postal tracking into compliance playbooks. Although the announcement is billed as temporary, officials concede the policy is unlikely to be reversed. Instead, it forms part of a broader digitisation push that will see 90 % of immigration interactions move online by 2028, mirroring the Passport Service’s successful “No-Counter” model.
