Studying in Ireland

What a year costs

Non-EU fees, from University College Dublin's published schedule:

• Arts, humanities, law, business, social science: €22,600-23,170
• Agriculture, engineering, science, nursing, physiotherapy: €29,500
• Veterinary medicine: €38,000-44,880
• Medicine: €63,890-66,360
• Taught master's: typically €16,000-25,000, with University of Galway's international postgraduate range running €6,420-34,640 depending on field

Trinity applies contractual annual uplifts to multi-year non-EU fees, so the fee rises each year of the same degree: check the increase percentage, not just year one.

Living costs. UCD publishes an official student budget, updated April 2026: low €1,735, median €2,445, high €4,035 a month. The median breaks down as accommodation €1,200, food €490, utilities €135, transport €75, books €120, and the rest personal.

• Dublin: €2,000-2,600 a month realistically, and €1,700 only with cheap or shared housing
• Galway, Cork, Limerick, Maynooth: €1,400-1,900, the gap is almost entirely rent

One-off costs on top: health insurance around €690, the IRP at €300 a year, a deposit of one month's rent, and basics for the flat.

The visa

Long Stay 'D' study visa for any course over 90 days. Non-visa-required nationals, such as the US, Canada, Australia and Brazil, do not need the D visa but must still register on arrival and meet the same financial test.

Fees: €60 single journey, €100 multi journey, non-refundable if refused. Plus €300 for the IRP registration on arrival, payable again at each renewal, so a four-year degree costs €300 four times.

Mandatory private medical insurance. Every non-EEA student needs it; budget around €690 a year. Public healthcare is not available to you on Stamp 2.

Processing time: this is the part agency sites get wrong. They uniformly quote four to eight weeks. The Immigration Service's own decisions page, updated 22 September 2026, shows applications received on or before 22 June 2026 being processed, an effective backlog of about three months, and it lengthens before the academic year. You may apply up to three months before travel, so apply on day one of that window.

The money: €10,000 for a course of a year or longer, or €833 a month for shorter courses. This came into force on 30 June 2025 and applies to visa-required and non-visa-required nationals alike. It is in addition to fees paid or payable.

Be clear-eyed about what that figure is. Against UCD's own median of €2,445 a month, about €29,340 a year: €10,000 covers roughly four months. Students who budget to the visa minimum and expect part-time work to close the gap get into serious difficulty by their second term.

Working while you study

20 hours a week in term, 40 hours a week in holidays. The holiday periods are fixed and standardised, not set by your college: June, July, August and September, plus 15 December to 15 January. Any other week is term time even if you have no classes.

Stamp 2A holders cannot work at all, that stamp is issued for programmes not on the eligible list, which is one more reason the ILEP check below matters.

After you graduate

Third Level Graduate Programme, Stamp 1G:

• Level 8 (honours bachelor's): 12 months, non-renewable, within an overall 7-year cap on student permission
• Level 9 and above (master's, PhD): 12 months, renewable for a further 12 if you can show active job-seeking, within an 8-year cap

Apply within six months of being notified of your results, miss it and the route is gone. Fee €300, and you must hold a current, in-date Stamp 2 when you apply; if your permission has lapsed you are not eligible.

Stamp 1G allows full-time work while you look for graduate-level employment, and bridges to a Critical Skills Employment Permit, which is the realistic target, because it leads to Stamp 4 and permanent residence far faster than the alternatives.

Language

UCD's published minima are representative of the sector:

• IELTS Academic 6.5 overall with minimum 6.0 in every band
• TOEFL iBT 90, with 21 in writing and 19 elsewhere (from January 2026 the new scale applies: 4.5 overall, 4.5 minimum each section)
• PTE 63/59, Duolingo 120/110, Cambridge 176/169

Law, journalism, medicine and teaching commonly want 7.0. Scores must generally be under two years old. The per-band minimum trips up more applicants than the overall score, a 6.5 average with 5.5 in writing fails.

When to apply

Undergraduate: most non-EU applicants apply directly to the university, not through CAO. Education in Ireland's official guidance is to contact the International Office of the institution you are interested in. CAO is the route for Irish and EU school-leavers; some non-EU applicants do use it depending on institution and qualification, so confirm with the specific office. The 2027 CAO form opens 5 November 2026.

Postgraduate, overwhelmingly September intake with a smaller January one, and most run rolling admissions from around October or November of the preceding year. Apply by January to March for September entry.

Work backwards from the three-month visa queue. For a September 2027 start: offer by February or March 2027, fees paid and funds seasoned by April, visa lodged as early as the three-month window allows, accommodation hunted in parallel from spring. Nine to twelve months' lead time is the honest answer. Applicants who secure an offer in June for a September start routinely miss their start date on visa timing alone.

What to watch out for

Dublin housing: the single biggest risk. On 1 May 2026 there were 1,187 homes available to rent in Dublin, down 23% year on year, and 2,374 nationally. Average Dublin two-bed rent is €2,536 a month. Open-market rents rose 4.4% between December and March: as much in one quarter as in all of 2025, and the largest quarterly jump since records began in 2002.

Purpose-built student accommodation is limited, expensive and allocated early. Students arriving in August or September without a signed lease routinely end up in hostels, commuting from other counties, or deferring. Do not accept a Dublin offer without a concrete accommodation plan, and treat "I'll find a place when I arrive" as a plan to fail. Scam listings demanding deposits before viewing are rampant in exactly that window.

ILEP and the TrustEd transition, a live regulatory change. Only programmes on the Interim List of Eligible Programmes carry a student immigration permission; enrol elsewhere and you get no Stamp 2, or a Stamp 2A with no work rights. The ILEP is now frozen: its final update was 20 June 2025, and is being superseded by TrustEd Ireland, a statutory quality mark administered by QQI. Only providers holding TrustEd authorisation will be eligible to recruit non-EEA students once ILEP ends, but no transition dates have been published. Two practical consequences: verify your exact programme, not just the institution, on the current list, and ask any provider directly whether it holds or has applied for TrustEd authorisation.

Private college and language school collapses are a documented, recurring pattern. Student Campus Limerick appears to have ceased operating in mid-2026; hundreds of international students contacted the Irish Council for International Students, teachers had been unpaid since April, and students were left with no clear information about their studies or their immigration status. This follows International House Galway, which collapsed into liquidation having collected fees for Learner Protection insurance it never actually provided: ICOS assessed the chance of refunds as "extremely low."

Because your immigration permission depends on continuing enrolment, a college failure threatens your legal status as well as your money. Verify Learner Protection insurance independently, pay in instalments where possible, never pay a full multi-year fee upfront to a private provider, and prefer publicly funded universities and institutes of technology where you can.

Visa refusals and non-refundable costs. The fee is not returned on refusal or withdrawal. Refusals commonly stem from funds that are insufficient, recently deposited without explanation, or not demonstrably your own; from gaps in academic history; or from an unconvincing account of why this programme. Money should sit in the account and be traceable, not appear in a lump the week before filing.

Where these numbers come from

Rules change, sometimes at short notice. Every figure above carries the date we checked it. Check the official source before you rely on it, and note that the ILEP end date and the TrustEd deadline have not been published.