working & staying after study
Stamp 1G gives master's graduates two years of unrestricted, full-time work with no employer sponsorship. It is one of the most straightforward post-study offers in this guide — with two deadlines that end it early.
Officially the Third Level Graduate Programme, universally called Stamp 1G. Graduates of an eligible Irish programme extend their permission in order to find employment.
Level 9 and above — master's, PhD: 24 months, granted as two 12-month blocks
Level 8 — honours bachelor's: 12 months
What it permits: full-time work, up to 40 hours a week, in any field
No separate work permit is needed on Stamp 1G, and no employer has to sponsor you.
Read that against the alternatives. The UK's Graduate Route drops to 18 months in 2027. The US routes you through the H-1B lottery. Canada ties PGWP length to a field-of-study list for college graduates. Ireland gives a master's graduate 24 months, full-time, in any field, as a published entitlement.
Both of these end the entitlement quietly, and neither is recoverable.
Application window: you must apply within 6 months of your graduation or qualification award
Total student time, Level 8 graduates: a maximum of 7 years total student permission, counting Stamp 2 and Stamp 1G together
Total student time, Level 9+ graduates: a maximum of 8 years total student permission
The caps count your Stamp 2 and Stamp 1G together. If you have already spent years in Ireland on a bachelor's and then a master's, check the arithmetic before you plan a further course — students occasionally discover the ceiling only when they hit it.
Stamp 1G is a bridge, not a destination. Its purpose is to give you time to convert into a longer-term permission.
The usual route is an employment permit — most commonly a Critical Skills Employment Permit for occupations on Ireland's in-demand list, or a General Employment Permit otherwise. The Critical Skills route is the one worth aiming at: it carries a faster path toward long-term residence and fewer restrictions than the general permit.
That makes your field of study the decisive variable, exactly as it is in New Zealand with the Green List. Ireland's multinational base is concentrated in tech, pharma, finance and med-tech — which is both where the jobs are and where the critical-skills occupations cluster. Choosing a field that lines up with that is the highest-leverage decision available to you, and it is made before you ever apply.
Ireland's framework is unusually predictable — published rules, clear stamp categories, defined durations. That is a real advantage over destinations where the outcome turns on discretion or a draw.
The constraint is scale. Ireland is a small country with a job market concentrated heavily in Dublin, so an unrestricted work permission is only as valuable as the roles available to use it on. Two years is generous, but it is two years in a market where the relevant employers are largely in one city — and where, as the costs page notes, finding somewhere to live in that city is genuinely hard.
Long-term residence is not automatic and depends on your permit type and continuous lawful residence. Treat any specific timeline as point-in-time and check the official position before planning around it.