Bringing family to Ireland: who can join you

Who can join you

ISD’s Policy Document on Non-EEA Family Reunification sets the rules for bringing family from outside the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland. The person living in Ireland is the sponsor. The policy covers:

• your nuclear family: your spouse, civil partner or de facto partner, and your unmarried children under 18;
• dependent parents;
• dependent adult children, but only if they depend on your care because of a serious medical or psychological condition that makes living independently impossible.

Other relatives can apply only in rare and exceptional circumstances, and only where there’s a real family relationship and real dependency.

The policy was revised on 26 November 2025 and again on 12 June 2026. Your application is decided under the version in force on the day you apply. There’s no automatic right to family reunification: ISD decides each case.

Check your family

Answer for the person living in Ireland. You’ll see if you can apply now or from when, the income you need, and what your family could do here.

Three kinds of sponsor

What you need depends on your sponsor category:

Category B also includes STEP entrepreneurs and investors on the Immigrant Investor Programme (their family gets Stamp 4), PhD students and approved scholarship students such as KASP (Stamp 2A), and ministers of religion (Stamp 3), each with conditions.

If you moved to Stamp 4 or Stamp 5 from another permission, you keep the category of your original permission. A Critical Skills holder who moved to Stamp 4 is still Category B.

Who can’t sponsor: students (except PhD and approved scholarship students), graduates on the Third Level Graduate Programme, and people with temporary protection. EU, UK and international protection holders use separate schemes (see below).

How much you need to earn in 2026

ISD counts one sponsor’s income only: you can’t add your partner’s salary. You also can’t have mainly relied on State supports for 2 years or more just before applying. Savings you or your family can show may be taken into account if your income falls a little short.

Children of Category C sponsors

ISD checks your net income last year against the Working Family Payment limits. Its indicative gross figures help if your job offer shows a gross salary:

If you’re thinking about a job on a General Employment Permit, ISD’s advice is to check this first: below these figures, your children won’t be able to join you.

Dependent parents and adult children (every sponsor)

You need to have earned in Ireland, in each of the last 3 years, more than:

These figures are 185% and 250% of average earnings, and they’re updated every year.

Housing

Category C sponsors must show suitable housing that isn’t overcrowded. In practice, at least:

• one bedroom for you and your partner;
• one more bedroom for every two children;
• enough bedrooms that no child over 10 shares with a child of the opposite sex.

So one son and one daughter aged 11 and 15 need 3 bedrooms; two sons aged 12 and 14 need 2. With children, you must rent or own the whole home: renting a room isn’t enough. A rented home must be registered with the Residential Tenancies Board, and you and your landlord fill in an ACCOM1 form. ISD may ask for this after you apply; if you don’t send it within 6 months, the application may be refused.

No sponsor can be living in social or local authority housing, homeless or emergency accommodation, or IPAS accommodation. If you get the Housing Assistance Payment, you may not meet the policy either.

Partners

• Spouses and civil partners must be 18 or over, and the marriage or civil partnership must be recognised in Irish law. You need to show you’ve met in person, before and since the marriage. There’s no minimum length of marriage.
• De facto partners must have lived together in a relationship like marriage for at least 2 years, with proof such as rent or mortgage payments, or joint household bills. Visiting each other isn’t enough. They apply from outside Ireland for preclearance, or a join family visa if they need one. ISD won’t accept a de facto application from someone in Ireland as a visitor or on a working holiday.
• If your marriage or partnership ends, you can’t sponsor a new partner until 5 years after the first partner’s permission was granted.

Children

Your children must be under 18 and unmarried: biological children, stepchildren who are full-time members of your household, or legally adopted children. If the other parent isn’t coming, ISD needs their signed consent, unless they’ve died, can’t consent or you have sole custody. ISD may also ask for a DNA test, usually at your cost.

Parents and adult children

These applications are much harder. Your relative must have depended on you for their basic needs, long term, to the point that they couldn’t live independently without your support. ISD also looks at whether other family could support them instead.

• First, apply for Stamp 0 for them, while they’re outside Ireland, whether they need a visa or not.
• The wait: none for Irish citizens, 2 years for Category B, 5 years for Category C.
• They need private medical insurance, and you sign an undertaking to cover their costs, including repaying any State support they use.
• Stamp 0 doesn’t allow work.

How to apply

1. Check the waiting period and income for your category.
2. If your family needs a visa: apply for a long stay join family (D) visa before they travel. Critical Skills holders can apply for their family at the same time as their own visa, and the applications are processed together.
3. If they don’t need a visa: they tell the immigration officer when they arrive that they’ve come for family reunification, and make sure their passport is stamped accordingly.
4. Wait for a decision. ISD’s targets, once every document is in, are about 6 months for family of Irish citizens and Category B sponsors, and about 12 months for Category C. ISD says it’s reorganising its join family teams, which may affect processing times.
5. Register within 90 days of arriving, and get an IRP card.

The visa fee is €60 for a single entry or €100 for multiple entries. Spouses and children under 18 of Irish citizens don’t pay it.

Can your family work?

Under the June 2026 policy, partners and children aged 16 to 18 of these sponsors can work without an employment permit: Irish citizens, Critical Skills and General Employment Permit holders, researchers on hosting agreements, intra-company transferees, STEP entrepreneurs and Immigrant Investor Programme investors.

Partners of other Stamp 4 holders get Stamp 3, which doesn’t allow work: they’d need an employment permit of their own. Dependent parents and adult children on Stamp 0 can’t work.

One page doesn’t match yet: ISD’s page for de facto partners already in Ireland still says partners of employment permit holders get Stamp 3. The June 2026 policy and ISD’s FAQ give partners of General permit holders Stamp 1G. Your permission letter is what counts.

Later on

• Your family’s permission depends on yours. If you leave Ireland for good, they must leave too.
• After 5 years living here, or once you become an Irish citizen, your partner and children can apply for Stamp 4 of their own at their next renewal.
• If your relationship ends, your partner may be able to get a permission of their own if you were together at least 3 years, the last 2 in Ireland. They must tell ISD within 21 working days.
• If someone whose permission you depend on abuses you, ISD has a separate process for you to get your own permission. ISD says you won’t be deported for reporting domestic abuse.

Other routes

• Family of EU, EEA and Swiss citizens who are using EU free movement rights apply under EU Treaty Rights, not this policy. A spouse, children under 21 and dependent parents qualify, and the visa is free.
• Family of UK citizens use a separate preclearance or visa scheme.
• Refugees and people with subsidiary protection apply under section 205 of the International Protection Act 2026, from 2 years after being granted protection. For a relationship that began after they arrived in Ireland, they apply under this policy as Category C sponsors, also after 2 years.

Common mix-ups

Common questions

Sources