Third-level student fees and charges

Fees

Free fees

In order to qualify for free fees you must have been living in an EEA member state or Switzerland for at least 3 of the 5 years before starting your course. The members of the EEA (the European Economic Area) are the 27 members of the EU, along with Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

You must also fulfil one of the following 6 criteria as regards citizenship and rights of residence in Ireland:

You must:

1. Be a citizen of an EEA member state (see above) or Switzerland or
2. Have official refugee status or
3. Be a family member of a refugee and have been granted permission to live in the State or
4. Be a family member of an EU national and have permission to live in the State, with a stamp “4EUFAM” on your residence card or
5. Have been granted humanitarian leave to remain in the State or
6. Have been granted permission to remain in the State by the Minister for Justice and Equality, following a determination by the Minister not to make a deportation order under Section 3 of the Immigration Act 1999.

You must also fulfil all of the following 3 course requirements:

1. You must be undertaking a full-time undergraduate course of at least 2 years' duration (or certain shorter courses in institutes of technology).
2. You must be a first-time full-time undergraduate. (However, prior undergraduate qualifications may be taken into consideration where exemptions are provided to a student pursuing a higher undergraduate qualification, to a maximum of Level 8 on the National Framework of Qualifications.)
3. In general, you must not be repeating the year because of failing your exams or changing course. This exclusion may be waived if you repeat a year due to certified serious illness. There are also some exceptions for students in institutes of technology who are switching courses.

The undergraduate courses for which the free fees arrangements apply are courses in:

• Universities
• Institutes of technology
• Publicly funded colleges of education
• National College of Ireland
• A number of religious education institutions

Free fees do not apply to courses in private colleges, whether they have Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC) approval or not. The fact that a course is listed by the Central Applications Office (CAO) is not, in itself, enough to make it a free fees course.

Detailed information about assistance with tuition fees is available on studentfinance.ie.

EU fees

If you do not qualify for free fees you may still be eligible for EU fee rates if you either:

• Fulfil one of the 6 citizenship and residence rights criteria listed above but do not fulfil all of the 3 course requirements listed above (for example, you are an Irish citizen but are repeating a year that you failed) or
• Do not fulfil any of the 6 citizenship and residence rights criteria listed above but have been tax resident for a number of years in an EEA member state or Switzerland. (However, as the third-level institutions are autonomous bodies, this is at the discretion of the institution concerned.)

If you do not qualify for EU fees you can be charged non-EU fees. Each third-level educational institution sets its own fee rates. You should contact the ones you are interested in to find out more about their fees - see 'Where to apply' below.

Postgraduate fees

In general, you will have to pay fees for a postgraduate course. However, for postgraduate courses subsidised under the Graduate Skills Conversion Programme, there is a reduced fee, which is €2,750 for the year 2011/2012.