Ireland · Residency by investment
Immigrant Investor Programme
Closed to new applications from 15 February 2023, with effectively no notice, ending an 11-year programme. Applications already on hand at closure are still being processed. As of January 2026, the Department of Justice confirmed roughly 1,400 files representing about EUR 1bn remained under review, with 1,164 late-stage files already processed, channelling EUR 771.9m into social housing bonds, nursing homes and sports facilities. Nothing has replaced it.
The IIP's closure removed the only route by which a non-EU family could purchase Irish residence. With it went the only practical way for most UHNW families to access the Irish non-dom remittance basis. That is the whole Irish problem in one sentence. The best tax regime in Western Europe now sits behind a door with no handle, unless you have EU citizenship or an Irish grandparent.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- €400k
- Total landed cost
- Historic terms: a EUR 400,000 endowment, or EUR 1m placed into an approved investment fund or enterprise for 3 years, plus fees.
- Route type
- Residency by investment
- Physical presence
- Historic requirement: one day per year.
- Family
- Historic: spouse or partner and dependent children
- Permanent residency
- Historic: Stamp 4 renewable permission, with long-term residence available after 5 years.
- Citizenship
- Historic: 5 years reckonable residence, though the one-day-a-year presence requirement made citizenship unreachable in practice.
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- Closed to new applications since 15 February 2023.
- The closure was abrupt and unannounced. It is a live lesson in policy risk for anyone timing a golden visa application anywhere.
- Legacy applicants are still in limbo three years on. Senior executives who filed under the old rules may not receive Stamp 4 permission until late 2026.
- Firms still marketing Ireland golden visa services are farming traffic on a dead programme.
- There is no successor and no credible signal of one. Do not plan around a revival.