Hi there,
I'm living here in Ireland now, and have been here since 2000. Work is pretty easy to find, but like a lot of places, it's depending on what you want to do. Moving to Ireland and becoming a legally registered resident is another question. First thing, are you or can you get EU or Irish citizenship through your parents or grandparents (great-grandparents in some cases)? Or are you married to an Irish national? These options would be the easiest and quickest way. Basically if you can obtain Irish (or any EU citizenship as EU nationals can move freely throughout the European Union countries), you can basically hop on plane and be drinkin Guinness by the weekend....
However, if you are like a lot of people (myself included), you must go the work permit or work authorization route to be able to come here and work and then apply for naturalization. There are ups and downs to this process.
The work authorization scheme is aimed at a particular job type/category that is currently in high demand here in Ireland. This scheme is open to many titles in the medical world (Dr, nurse, tech....) or engineers, town planners, architects, etc. I believe that it is obtained through your home embassy before you come over, as long as you have a proper job offer in hand. It is valid for 2 years and you can change employers as long as you stay within the same sector of job-type e.g Dr. in Dublin and moved to being a Dr. in Cork. The other option is the Work Permit scheme which is much more restrictive.
To get a work permit, you must have a position lined up with an employer. The EMPLOYER applies for and pays for the permit, which right now is 500.00 per year. A permit is valid for a maximum 1 year only but can be renewed. Many admin changes have occured since I arrived in 2000, and now the employer must prove that he/she tried in vain to get another other Irish/EU national to do your position but none could be found, so they had to resort to a non-EU person. The employer does this by advertising the job vacancy on the national Irish government website FAS for 4 weeks (I think that's the length) and if no qualified EU person can be found, the job is then offered to you and the work permit application process begins. Check out
www.FAS.ie to see what types of job catergories they have on offer. It currently takes 8-10 weeks to process the application and you can not work in the job while its being processed. Furthermore, you cannot change employers, one permit is issued to the employer under your name, its not issued to you personally, so if you wanna change employers, it's back to the start again. Many immigrant groups and some government officials are arguing for the permit to be given to the person, but so far no changes have been made and I'm not holding my breath. As you can see, this restrictive option can lead to the expolitation of the worker, and many cases have been brought into the media over here.
Now, becoming a citizen via the naturalization route. The process involves an application form only with no formal interview or citizenship test. The decision is entirely up to the Minister. Basically, you must be a legal resident here for 5 years before you can apply. These 5 years can be segmented, you don't have to stay 5 straight years in a row, but the time that you are in the country, you must have had legal permission to stay. They calculate the 5 years by any time that you were in Ireland legally in the 9 years preceeding your application for citizenship with the year immediately preceeding your application being a full, straight year (minus holidays). You must show copies of your passport which has been stamped by Immigration officials here stating that you a were legal resident. It costs 634.00 Euros to become a citizen and is currently taking 18 months to process an application. So, assuming that you do get here, get a work permit and stay 5 yrs, tack on another year and half before you be Irish.
Housing is more expensive in Dublin with the city recently being one of the most expensive cities to live in the EU. An accomodation website
www.daft.ie is a good one to try.
Well, that's the short and long of it. For full info on work authorizations and work permits, log onto government website
www.entemp.ie For info on citizenship go to
www.justice.ie also recruitment websites like
www.monster.ie are good and the newspapers are kept on
www.unison.ie to keep you up to date, who knows what changes may be implemented?
Good luck, come over if you can, 'the craic is mighty' as they say. Hope this email has not been too discouraging but it's the reality.
Cheers,
Maria
