Ireland after the investor programme closed

Ireland closed its immigrant investor programme in 2023, ahead of the wave that closed Spain's and reshaped Portugal's. Applications in the system were processed; the route is gone.

What remains

• Employment permits, including a critical skills route with a faster path to long-term status.
• The Start-up Entrepreneur Programme, for founders with a high-potential venture and funding — an assessment, not a purchase.
• Stamp 0, a limited permission for people of independent means, restrictive by design and not a route to settlement.
• Study, with a graduate scheme.
• Family routes, including for the family of Irish and EU nationals.

The ancestry route, which matters more than any of them

Irish citizenship by descent is among the most generous in Europe. A grandparent born on the island of Ireland generally opens entitlement through the foreign births register, and in defined cases the line extends further where the parent was registered before the applicant's birth.

The consequence is that a large number of people who are considering paying for European status already qualify for an EU passport for the cost of archive work. That question should be answered before any programme is considered.

The tax layer

Ireland taxes residents on worldwide income, with a remittance basis available to residents who are not domiciled there — a regime broadly similar to the one the United Kingdom has now abolished, and one reason internationally mobile people look at Ireland since that abolition. It has conditions and it is under periodic review.

The honest position

Ireland is an excellent place to be if you can get there on merit or by ancestry, and it is closed to capital. Anyone whose plan was to buy in is looking at the wrong country. Anyone with an Irish grandparent is looking at the best deal on this page.