Since 2025 first registration happens only in Dublin, for the whole country, and appointments open in a ten-week window. Path to citizenship scores 90.
The core rules are friendly. Permits are issued quickly; the spouse of a critical skills permit holder gets Stamp 1G and can work for any employer straight away, and such holders bring a spouse and children at once without a separate financial threshold. Children attend state school free of charge, there are no mandatory integration courses, and citizenship after 5 years needs neither a language exam nor a test.
The cracks are in delivery and transparency. Since January 2025 every first-time registration in the country goes through one office in Dublin, with slots released on a rolling 10-week window. Registration renewals in some categories have taken more than 17 weeks. The state publishes only permits issued and no refusal statistics at all. Family applications have a 6-month target, but the Immigrant Council reports 12-14 months in practice.
Pressure on residents is targeted and comes through the rules. Since 12 June 2026 citizen sponsors must show income of €75,000 over three years instead of €40,000, and general work permit holders wait 12 months and must prove housing. The salary thresholds raised on 1 March 2026 also apply to renewals, with no protection for people already holding permits. We found no systematic revocation of statuses already granted.
If you are made redundant, your status holds: notify the department within 4 weeks and you get 6 months to find a new job, with the new permit exempt from the labour market test. Changing employer on your own initiative is possible only after 9 months, within the same sector and through an application assessed against criteria. A renewal filed on time keeps your right to live and work until the decision.
Day to day, the main barrier is the bank: an account requires proof of address, so a newcomer without one cannot open an account at an Irish bank, and many start with neobanks. There is no address registration system.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
Ireland is not in the Schengen area, so Schengen rules do not apply here. Under the J1 Working Holiday agreement some US citizens may live and work in Ireland for up to 12 months; a long-term move follows the same work permit route.
Under the Common Travel Area they live, work and study in Ireland without any immigration permission; Brexit did not affect this right.
No permit needed: EU free movement rules give the right to live and work.
EU temporary protection, which Ireland also applies, is extended to 4 March 2028. Since 31 July 2026 new applicants must show they left in line with their military obligations; people who already hold the status are not affected. No entry visa is needed, but since 5 June 2024 a valid biometric passport is required.
When we checked on 9 August 2026 we found no direct nationality bar on the critical skills permit. Entry requires an Irish visa, with applications taken by a visa centre in Russia and Belarus; Schengen and UK visas are not valid for Ireland.
The place interval 14-21 shows where the country lands when the data is nudged and the index is recalculated. One place of difference in the table means nothing; a difference of a league means something.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Family rights: 92 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 72.2. The weakest is Agency processing: 52 against 48.7. Above the world average: 6 out of 7.
All 97 states are calculated for one applicant: 35 years old, income of $2,500 and $3,856 a month before tax, passport not counted, the most accessible route that is actually in use.
Your passport, your income and your family do not change the table. They change which of its lines apply to you. A different income makes entry read differently, a family makes the family category read differently, and your passport makes everything read differently.
At the end of July 2026 critical skills permits were processed in about 2 weeks. The longest wait is first-time registration in Dublin: slots open 10 weeks ahead, and at the end of 2025 waits reached 8-10 weeks.
Hardly: there is no digital nomad visa. The options left are the STEP start-up programme with at least €50,000 and an innovative project, and business permission with around €300,000; the immigrant investor programme closed in 2023.
€1,000 for the work permit, €300 for residence registration and another €300 at each yearly renewal. About €2,500 per applicant over five years and about €4,000 for a family of three; children under 16 do not register.
If you are made redundant you keep your status: you have 6 months to find a new job, provided you notify the department within 4 weeks. The real risk is elsewhere: the 2026 salary thresholds also apply to renewals.
Stamp 4 without a work permit after 2 years, long-term residence after 5, open-ended Stamp 5 after 8 years. Citizenship after 5 years of residence with no language exam or test; dual citizenship is allowed.
For skilled professionals the rules are mild: fast permits, family at once, citizenship without exams. The problems are registration queues, unpublished refusal statistics and the 2026 tightening for families and renewals.
97 states, 26 indicators, seven categories, 2,522 scores. Every score has a source and a source class: primary means the texts of laws and government portals; reliable secondary means reports by international organisations, tax reviews by audit firms and specialist legal publications; weak means community posts and single secondary sources. The classes add up to a confidence level for the country, and a country with low confidence gets neither a score nor a place.
Every indicator is scored against a fixed ruler, not against its neighbours. Adding new countries therefore does not move the old ones, and a change in a score means a change in policy and nothing else.
A high place does not mean a good country. It means one thing: the state machine treats newcomers predictably and by the rules. Living there may be expensive, dull or hot; that is not our question.
Checked 01/10/2026. Facts come from the country's index card and official websites.
We make mistakes and we will go on making them: policy changes faster than any database. Our answer is not a pose of infallibility but a visible trail of corrections. Every correction is published: what it was, what it became, the source and the reason for the error. The corrections log opens with the second issue, together with the first block of changes.