The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE) has issued a notice on its Employment Permits Online System (EPOS) warning users that the portal will be unavailable on Tuesday, 6 October 2026 from 18:00 to 21:00 Irish Standard Time due to scheduled maintenance. EPOS is the sole platform through which employers, agents and foreign nationals file applications for General, Critical Skills and other employment permits. During the three-hour outage no new applications can be submitted and users will be unable to download receipt letters or pay government fees. DETE advises organisations with time-sensitive filings—particularly renewal applications for employees whose current permits expire in mid-October—to submit well in advance of the blackout window. Applications that are saved in draft form but not formally submitted before 18:00 will not be processed and users may need to re-enter certain data. The upgrade will install security patches and add a new dashboard function that shows real-time average processing times by permit type, a long-requested feature for corporate mobility teams. No change to documentary requirements or fee schedules is expected. Global mobility managers should alert line managers and assignees of the downtime, ensure any critical submissions are lodged early on 6 October, and build a short contingency buffer into onboarding timelines. EPOS outages typically end on schedule, but DETE says users can follow its X (@deptenterprise) feed for live updates.
