If you sat A-Levels, the International Baccalaureate or a European school-leaving exam and want a full-time undergraduate place in an Irish college, you apply through the CAO like everyone else, by 5pm on 1 February 2027. What differs is the paperwork: which documents the CAO needs from you, when, and how your grades are turned into points. The colleges, not the CAO, do the scoring, and the rules they use are published.

This guide applies to EU, EEA, UK and Swiss nationals and to Irish families returning from abroad. Non-EU applicants should read our separate guide, since some colleges take them directly rather than through the CAO.

CAO or direct application?

The CAO Handbook 2027 is clear that the CAO handles full-time undergraduate entry only; postgraduate, part-time and evening courses are applied for directly to the college. For an EU, UK or Swiss school-leaver with a non-Irish qualification, the CAO is the route. It opens at 12 noon on 5 November 2026, the reduced fee of €35 runs until 5pm on 20 January 2027, and the normal fee is €50 until the closing date of 5pm on 1 February 2027.

The one exception is residence. The handbook says applicants who are, or have been, resident outside the EU “may be required to apply direct to some HEIs” and should check with each college well before 1 February. That catches Irish or EU citizens who spent school years outside Europe.

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The two application categories

The first category is GCE A/AS Level and GCSE. Applicants in this category are considered in Round One, which is issued in the week after the Leaving Cert results in August, and in later rounds. For summer 2027 results the CAO collects CCEA and British GCE results electronically in August, so there is nothing to post. For any earlier sitting you must send copies of certificates from the exam board itself, not from the school. Enter every result with the correct year, sitting, level, subject and grade, because GCSEs are used to check minimum entry requirements.

The second category is Other School Leaving Examinations, which the handbook describes as school-leaving exams from outside the UK and Ireland, and the Baccalaureate. This takes in the International Baccalaureate, the European Baccalaureate, the French Baccalauréat, the German Abitur and the other national school-leaving exams. These qualifications “are assessed by the Higher Education Institutions”, so the CAO’s job is to collect the documents and pass them on. The handbook says plainly: do not submit predicted grades or a personal statement. Irish colleges do not use either.

Documents: within 10 days, or 12 days before the round

For an exam you have already completed, evidence should reach the CAO “within 10 days of registering with CAO”. That means a student who registers in November with A-Levels from 2026 sends them in November, not in February. For an exam you sit in 2027, the results must be with the CAO “a minimum of 12 days before the relevant offer round”. The HEIs’ joint guidelines for EU applicants put a practical date on this for Round One: current-year results should reach the CAO by 1 August.

Upload or post, not both, and translate anything not in English or Irish. For May 2027 IB candidates there is a shortcut: ask the school’s IB coordinator to add the CAO to the institutions allowed to access your results, and give the CAO your IB candidate number.

The Check and Confirm email, sent before the end of May, lists what the CAO holds on your record. If an exemption or a qualification is missing, that is the moment to fix it.

How A-Levels are scored

The CAO scoring page for GCE applicants publishes the conversion used by the colleges. Up to four results count: A-Levels, AS-Levels and the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), which is scored as an AS. The best three A-Levels are scored at the full rate and a fourth subject, whether a fourth A-Level or an AS, at a much lower rate.

Three A* grades plus a fourth A* give 600, the same maximum as six H1s in the Leaving Cert. The permitted combinations are the best four A-Levels from one sitting; three A-Levels plus one AS; two A-Levels plus two AS; or one A-Level plus three AS. AS results may come from an earlier sitting, but A-Levels must be from a single academic year. An AS and an A-Level in the same subject cannot both be counted.

There is a maths bonus. A grade E or better in Mathematics, Further Mathematics or Pure Mathematics earns 25 extra points, but only where that subject is one of the ones being scored, and Mathematics and Pure Mathematics cannot both count. General Studies is not accepted. GCSE evidence is still needed to meet minimum entry requirements, and the colleges, not the CAO, evaluate the qualification.

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How IB and EU qualifications are scored

For every system other than the Leaving Cert and A-Levels, the colleges use a joint policy document, Entry requirements criteria for EU/EFTA/UK applicants, linked from the handbook as cao.ie/euefta. The 2026 edition is current at the time of writing; it is revised each year and the 2027 version should appear on that page.

The document covers more than thirty systems, including Scotland, the UK, the European Baccalaureate and the International Baccalaureate. For each country it gives two tables. One maps grades to Leaving Cert grades to test subject requirements, and the document stresses that this table “is NOT used for points conversion”. The other produces an Indicative Points Score out of 600, usually from the best five or six recognised subjects, or from the exam’s average mark where it produces one. France, for example, is scored on the Baccalauréat average out of 20.

Some principles run through every country section. Scoring uses a single sitting, because that is how Irish school-leavers are scored. Two systems cannot be combined; if you present both, each is scored separately and the better score used. Only subjects recognised for Irish admission count, and projects or theses generally do not. The 25-point maths bonus is applied where the system draws a clear line between levels, such as A-Level Maths at grade E or better. The document says the points “are indicative only” and that EU applicants “are considered in competition with Irish school leavers”. No conditional offers are issued: Irish offers are made on results actually achieved.

Appeals against the scoring go first to the college admissions office and must be lodged within 20 days of the Round One offer date.

Minimum entry and the NUI rules

The joint guidelines give the Level 8 benchmark as six subjects, of which two or three must be at the equivalent of Leaving Cert H5 and the rest at O6 or better, and note that vocational subjects are generally not accepted for Level 8.

The four NUI universities, UCD, UCC, University of Galway and Maynooth, add their own layer. The NUI entry requirements page says six subjects are required, with H5 in two and H7 or O6 in four, and that English and Irish must be among them. A third language is required for most courses in Arts, Law, Commerce, Medicine and Health Sciences. The NUI publishes a list of subjects recognised for matriculation for GCE and GCSE applicants, linked from the CAO handbook; check that your A-Level and GCSE subjects are on it. LCVP does not count as one of the six.

The Irish exemption

Irish worries families abroad most, and for most of them it falls away. The CAO handbook states that candidates “born and fully educated outside the Republic of Ireland” who present a qualification other than the Leaving Cert are automatically exempt from Irish for matriculation. For the NUI universities the position is set out on the NUI language exemptions page: you qualify for an Irish exemption if you were born outside the Republic, were educated up to the age of 12 outside Ireland, or spent three or more continuous years of primary or post-primary schooling outside Ireland. What counts is where the student physically was while learning, not where the school is based.

Two cautions. The NUI says its exemptions “are not automatic” and the applicant is responsible for applying, which is done online at exemptions.nui.ie; if the exemption is not showing when the Check and Confirm email arrives, contact the NUI at once. And an exemption from Irish does not remove the third-language requirement where a course has one. The NUI accepts any Leaving Cert language and any EU language for that purpose, but Classical Studies and Hebrew Studies do not count.

English

The joint guidelines say an A-Level applicant meets the English requirement with GCSE English Language at grade 4 or C, and they also accept GCSE English Literature at that grade. Applicants from other systems normally meet it through the English result in their own exam; where that grade is too low or more than two years old, a separate test is needed, and the guidelines give an IELTS Academic average of 6.5 with no band below 6.0 as the benchmark, and say test results must be dated within two years of the course start.

HEAR and DARE

The handbook says HEAR is for school-leavers “resident in the Republic of Ireland” who are under 23 on 1 January 2027, so a family living in Northern Ireland or France cannot use it; the HEAR eligibility page repeats the residency rule. DARE has the same age rule but no residency rule in the handbook. For both, indicate on the CAO form by 1 February, complete the forms by 1 March, and have documents in by 5pm on 10 March 2027.

Who pays EU fees, and who pays more

Under the Free Fees Initiative, the State pays tuition for eligible full-time undergraduates and the student pays the student contribution. The HEA’s course fees page sets out the two tests: you must be a national of an EU or EEA state, Switzerland or the UK (or hold one of the listed immigration statuses, such as refugee status), and you must have been “ordinarily resident in an EU/EEA/Swiss State/United Kingdom for at least three of the five years preceding” entry. The HEA’s table footnote confirms the list “includes the United Kingdom”, so a student from Belfast or Manchester with British citizenship and three of the last five years in the UK qualifies on the same basis as a student from Cork. The college, not the HEA, decides each case, and the initiative does not cover a second undergraduate degree.

The student contribution is €2,500 for 2025/26. Budget 2027, announced on 6 October 2026, includes a permanent reduction of €150; the Budget in Brief confirms the cut, and our Budget 2027 guide has the detail.