The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE) quietly refreshed its online processing timetable on 17 July 2026. Critical Skills Employment Permit (CSEP) files are now being reviewed for completeness on applications lodged 1 July 2026, while General Employment Permit (GEP) cases have moved forward to 10 June 2026. Intra-Company Transfer (ICT) permits are up to 19 June 2026 for new requests, but renewals and other categories remain stuck at early April. Appeals are still at December 2025. For corporate mobility teams the update provides a useful—if sobering—benchmark. A standard CSEP application submitted today can still expect an eight-to-nine-week wait before it reaches an officer, meaning total end-to-end times of three to four months once document checks, visa lodging and entry formalities are factored in. Employers sponsoring autumn project staff should therefore file immediately and investigate DETE’s Trusted Partner route, which trims paperwork but not the queue. The department attributes delays to sustained labour-market demand and the complexity of the new Employment Permits Act 2024, which introduced occupation-list reviews and a salary-indexation mechanism. Officials insist that additional examiners recruited this spring will begin to show an impact from September. Pending that, businesses should build contingencies: remote work from a Schengen hub, staged onboarding, or use of short-stay visas for training that can lawfully be conducted without a permit. HR should also diarise upcoming statutory changes—salary thresholds will rise again on 1 January 2027 in line with the consumer-price index. Because queue data are published irregularly, practitioners recommend screenshotting the DETE web page when preparing assignment forecasts or responding to audit queries, thereby demonstrating that realistic lead times were considered.
