Student visa for Ireland, for students from Guinea-Bissau

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.