Tips·6 min read·12 May 2026
Hiring a tradesperson in Ireland: 10 things to check before you pay anyone
A practical pre-hire checklist — what to verify, what to avoid, and which rules are legally enforced versus industry norm.
By Oguzhan
A practical pre-hire checklist — what to verify, what to avoid, and which rules are legally enforced versus industry norm.
By Oguzhan
A small amount of homework before the first call saves the much larger amount of homework that comes after a job goes wrong. These ten rules apply across plumbing, electrical, building, cleaning, gardening — anything where a stranger is doing work on your property in exchange for money.
Irish Consumer Rights Act 2022 protects you in distance-concluded contracts, but the protection only kicks in when the contract terms are documented. A phone quote that turns into a different number on arrival is the single most-reported complaint pattern. Insist on the price in writing — text message, email, or a platform quote that has a timestamp. On WorkMate, every accepted quote is written, timestamped, and held against the final invoice.
Public liability insurance is not a legal requirement for many trades in Ireland. But the gap between a forty-euro plumber call and a forty-thousand-euro water damage claim is the insurance. Ask for the certificate; serious tradespeople expect the question and have it ready. Refusal to provide one is data — not evidence the work will be bad, but information about how they handle risk.
Safe Pass is mandatory under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 1989 for any worker on a construction site. If your home is in any state of active construction (extension, renovation, scaffolding present), Safe Pass is the legal minimum. Cards have photos and expiry dates — both should be checked.
RECI and RGII are not optional. Electrical work and gas work both require registration. Anyone offering either without it is operating outside the law regardless of skill — and the indemnity for damage falls on you. A reputable tradesperson volunteers their RECI or RGII number; you do not have to fight for it.
The lowest quote is rarely the best quote. Industry rule of thumb: drop the cheapest, drop the most expensive, and choose from the middle band. An outlier-low price almost always means a cost has been removed — usually the insurance, the tax declaration, or the time to do the job properly. Outlier-high usually means the bidder does not really want the work.
About the author
Oguzhan
Founder, WorkMate. Building a transparent services marketplace in Ireland.
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A Tax Clearance Certificate from the Revenue Commissioners is easy to issue and easy to verify. If a tradesperson cannot produce one for a job over a thousand euro, the work is happening outside the tax system. That may be their problem in the short term and your problem in the long term — if Revenue investigates, money you paid in cash without a paper trail becomes part of an investigation you did not ask to be in.
There is a difference between cash-preferred (some sole traders find it simpler) and cash-only. The former is a habit; the latter is a policy that removes your dispute leverage. Cards, bank transfer, and platform-held payments all create a paper trail that protects both sides. WorkMate holds payment through Stripe until the work is confirmed complete — neither side can disappear with the money.
Especially for plumbing, electrical, and building work. Photos are the single best piece of evidence for any dispute. They cost you nothing to take and are worth disproportionately more than verbal recollection when something needs investigating later. Take time-stamped photos with your phone — most do this automatically.
A standard pattern across Ireland is thirty percent deposit, fifty percent on milestone, twenty percent on completion. For smaller jobs (under five hundred euro) some tradespeople ask for nothing upfront and invoice on completion. Anyone demanding the full amount in advance is asking you to take all the risk — that is not a professional relationship.
Every county has a regional office of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC). For more serious matters, the Garda Síochána accepts reports online at gardaireport.ie. For platform-mediated work, WorkMate accepts dispute filings through the dashboard — and we read every one.
Every WorkMate provider clears Stripe Connect identity verification before they can receive a single euro. Public liability insurance, Safe Pass, and Tax Clearance Certificates can be uploaded to a provider's profile, where they appear as trust badges. Customers see those signals before they accept a quote, and customers pay through Stripe — which holds the money until you confirm the work is done. The ten rules above are the offline version of what we automate online.
If you would rather not have to remember all ten rules every time, post a job on WorkMate and we apply most of them for you by default.