Irish CV Conventions: Referees, Garda Vetting and Permits

By , founder of CVBooster · Published · Updated

8 min read

You send a clean two-page CV to a Dublin employer. The reply is neither a rejection nor an interview invitation. It is three questions: can you supply two referees with contact details, are you currently Garda vetted, and what is your permission to work in the State. You answer all three within an hour and still lose four days, because the coordinator moved on to a candidate whose CV answered them on page one.

That happens constantly to people applying into Ireland with a CV built for the British market. The two documents look almost identical. The conventions underneath them are not. Irish employers ask for named referees at application stage far more often than British ones do, a large slice of Irish hiring runs through Garda vetting, and work permission here runs on permits and stamps rather than visas by tier.

The four divergences from a UK CV

Referees come first: naming two on the CV, with job titles and contact details, is still common and often expected here, so "references available on request" reads as a delay. Then Garda vetting, worth flagging if you already hold a disclosure. Then work permission, where naming your permit or stamp changes what the employer has to do. And finally your PPS number, which belongs nowhere on a job application.

The rest transfers: two pages, reverse chronological, no photo, no date of birth, achievement-led bullets. If your CV already works in London, you are editing four things.

Named referees: the convention that did not die here

British advice spent the last decade telling people to delete the referees section and reclaim the space. That advice travelled to Ireland and it does not fit. Irish employers, particularly smaller ones, agencies, and anything in health, care or education, frequently want two referees named up front, and a good number will phone them before the offer rather than after it. In the public sector it is a required field, since publicjobs.ie and most local authority forms ask for referee details inside the application.

The safe position is a short referees block at the foot of page two. Give each one a full name, current job title and organisation, your working relationship and the period, a mobile number, and a work email rather than a personal one, since a work domain is itself a piece of verification. Two referees is standard, and three is normal in care and education.

Tip: Ask the person first, every time, and tell them what you applied for. You are handing their name and workplace to strangers, so under GDPR you should have their agreement before you circulate it. It also prevents a referee who sounds surprised on the phone.

If you cannot expose your current employer, do not drop the section. Write the line that protects you: "Referee 2: current line manager, contact details supplied at offer stage, please do not contact before then." Irish recruiters see that constantly and it costs you nothing. An empty space where a name should be does.

Garda vetting, and why you cannot start it yourself

Garda vetting is carried out by the National Vetting Bureau of An Garda Síochána under the National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Acts 2012 to 2016. It is mandatory for what the legislation calls relevant work with children or vulnerable persons, which pulls in more roles than applicants expect: HSE and section 39 funded services, nursing homes, home support, schools, early years and Tusla registered services, sports coaching, and any post, paid or voluntary, with access to children or vulnerable adults.

The mechanic that catches people out is that you cannot apply for your own vetting. Only a relevant organisation registered with the Bureau can start it. Its authorised liaison person sends you a vetting invitation, you complete the application through the eVetting portal, and the disclosure goes back to that organisation, which gives you a copy. A Garda police certificate is a different document, used for immigration purposes, and does not satisfy a vetting requirement. Because you cannot self-serve vetting, holding one is an asset and belongs on the page.

Two caveats. A disclosure has no statutory expiry date, but organisations set their own re-vetting policies. And vetting is largely not portable, so assume a fresh one on appointment. Never attach the disclosure itself: it carries your date of birth, previous addresses and any recorded information. Offer it, do not publish it.

Your PPS number stays off the application

The Personal Public Service Number is issued by the Department of Social Protection and it is the key to your welfare, revenue and health records. No legitimate Irish employer needs it before you are hired. Use of the PPSN is restricted by law, and the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 sets out which bodies may use it and for what. An employer sits on that list in respect of your employment, meaning payroll, PAYE and PRSI, which is why they ask once you accept and they register the job with Revenue.

That is the only legitimate trigger. A "verification" request at application stage, or a recruiter asking by email to "pre-register" you, is either sloppiness or an identity theft attempt. Never on the CV, never in the cover letter, and blank in any form field labelled "national ID". Hand it over through payroll after you accept, and treat your passport number, Public Services Card and bank details the same way.

Permits and stamps: say which one you are

This is where applicant time gets wasted in both directions. People who need no permit fail to say so and get filtered out. People who need one apply blind to employers who will not consider it. Employment permits are decided by the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, under a framework overhauled by the Employment Permits Act 2024.

A Critical Skills Employment Permit requires the occupation to sit on the Critical Skills Occupations List, which skews to ICT, engineering, healthcare, science and some finance roles. There is no Labour Market Needs Test, so the employer does not have to advertise the role and evidence that no EEA candidate was suitable. It is issued for two years, after which the holder can normally apply to Immigration Service Delivery for Stamp 4, and a spouse or partner can apply for Stamp 1G and work without a permit.

A General Employment Permit covers occupations that are not on the ineligible list, a much broader net. A Labour Market Needs Test is normally required, so the role has to be advertised through the public employment service first. The 50:50 rule applies, meaning the employer must have at least half its employees from the EEA, with limited exemptions for new companies. The permit is tied to the employer for the first twelve months, and the route to Stamp 4 runs to around five years rather than two.

Tip: If your role plausibly sits on the Critical Skills Occupations List, say so. "Role appears eligible for a Critical Skills Employment Permit" tells a hiring manager there is no advertising exercise to run and no labour market test to document. Check the current lists and remuneration thresholds on the department's employment permits pages the day you apply, because both are revised.

One line for every status

Put the line in the contact block under your name, or as the closing sentence of your profile. Not a section of its own, and never a table of immigration dates. What stays off the page: your IRP card number, your passport number, and scans of either.

If you are regulated here, the same header logic applies to your registration number, because an NMBI PIN, a CORU number or a Teaching Council number is verifiable in seconds on a public register. A UK NMC PIN is not an NMBI PIN, so say where your Irish application stands.

Personal details and the equality rules behind them

The Employment Equality Acts 1998 to 2015 prohibit discrimination on nine grounds: gender, civil status, family status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, race, and membership of the Traveller community, with complaints going to the Workplace Relations Commission. The practical consequence is that most Irish employers actively do not want the data that would let them discriminate, so volunteering it makes the reader uncomfortable rather than informed.

Leave out the photo, date of birth, age, marital or civil status, number of children, religion and PPS number. Include your name, a mobile in +353 format, one professional email address, your city and county, and LinkedIn if it is current. A full street address is unnecessary, since "Dublin 8" or "Galway" is enough.

A header block you can copy

Here is the top of the page for a healthcare assistant applying in Cork, with every Irish-specific fact visible before the first job title.

Six lines, and a manager can decide whether to interview you before scrolling. Swap the vetting line for a registration number, or for the permit line if you are applying from outside the State, and the same block works for a software engineer in Dublin.

The mistakes that cost Irish applicants interviews

None of this is about writing better bullets. It is about removing the three questions an Irish employer would otherwise have to email you to ask. One caution: permit thresholds and occupation lists change, so confirm any figure against the current pages from the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment and from Immigration Service Delivery. This is general guidance on Irish CV convention, not legal advice.

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