How to read CORU's approved qualifications lists: approval attaches to an award title and an awarding body, not to a college — and a course taught in Dublin can still be an international application

CORU’s approved qualifications are published one profession at a time, and each entry is written as an award title plus an awarding body. That format is the whole story, and it produces three results that surprise people:

• The college you attend is not the unit of approval. University College Dublin appears in these lists under more than one legal name, and institutions that no longer exist still appear under the names they had when the qualification was approved.
• A programme taught in Ireland can be outside the Irish graduate route entirely. CORU names two private colleges whose programmes are, in its words, “NOT CORU approved programmes”.
• Approval can attach to a division of the register, not just to a profession. One physiotherapy entry is approved specifically for the Referral for Radiological Diagnostic Procedures Division.

This page explains how to read one entry. It is not a copy of the lists — they are short, they are CORU’s, and they are one click away from the page linked above.

What approval is, legally

Approval is a statutory function, not a courtesy. CORU’s own statement:

“One of the statutory functions of the Registration Boards is to approve and monitor education and training for the registration of professions. This power is set out in Part 5 of the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005 (as amended).”

It runs in two stages — programme approval, then continuing monitoring — and the standard being tested is specific:

“The provider must demonstrate that the programme(s) associated with a specific qualification meets the criteria for education and training programmes and has a system in place to consistently and safely produce graduates who meet the standards of proficiency for the profession.”

Each profession’s list then repeats that formula. On the physiotherapy page: qualifications “have been approved by the Physiotherapists Registration Board as attesting to the standard of proficiency required for registration for Physiotherapists.” Approved as attesting to a standard. Not approved as good, not approved as employable — approved as evidence of proficiency for one register.

Note the word. At CORU, “approved” means a statutory board approved one named Irish qualification. At the Engineering Council in the UK, “approved” is the looser of its two categories and travels across delivery locations. At the RIAI in Ireland, an institute-accredited architecture qualification still needs a Minister to “prescribe” it before it counts. Three regulators, three grammars — see accreditation, approval and recognition are not synonyms.

Trap one: the awarding body in the entry is the legal awarding body, not the campus

Read across a single list and you will see the same institution written several ways, because the entries record who legally makes the award. On the social workers list, University College Dublin appears both as “University College Dublin” and as “National University of Ireland, University College Dublin”. The same list carries “Institute of Technology Sligo” and “Technological University of the Shannon: Midlands Midwest” — an institution under a name it no longer uses, alongside institutions under names created by mergers.

The practical consequence: search by the wording on your parchment, not by the name on the building. If your certificate says “National University of Ireland”, the entry that covers you may well not contain the word you would search for first. And an entry naming a dissolved institute is not a dead entry — it is the entry that covers that institute’s graduates.

Trap two: the award title alone may not be the whole condition

One physiotherapy entry does not stop at a title. It reads: “Bachelor in Science in Physiotherapy (BSc (Physio)) from the University of Dublin awarded to graduates on successful completion of the four year pathway/programme to this award.”

The qualifying words are the four year pathway/programme to this award. Two people can hold the same award title from the same university and only one of them is covered, because the route to the award differs. Whenever an entry carries a clause after the award title, that clause is not decoration — it is the condition.

The same list also shows that approval can be divisional. Separately from the entries that lead to registration as a physiotherapist, one entry is approved “for the education and training of candidates for registration in the Referral for Radiological Diagnostic Procedures Division of the register”. Approval for the profession and approval for a division of the register are two different approvals.

Trap three: taught in Ireland does not mean the Irish route

This is the most consequential thing CORU publishes about education, and it sits on a page most applicants never find. Two private colleges — CORU names Portobello Institute and Chevron College — deliver programmes in health and social care professions in Ireland. CORU’s statement about them:

“These programmes are NOT CORU approved programmes but instead are accredited by UK based universities. Although these programmes are provided in the Irish State, the route to registration with CORU is via the international application route and not the Irish graduate route.”

CORU then publishes a table with a column headed “Approved by UK Regulator (HCPC)?”, and the routes it produces are not uniform even within one college. As published on 3 September 2026, an MSc in Physiotherapy at one of those colleges is HCPC-approved and routed to CORU’s Fast Track Pathway, while an MSc in Speech and Language Therapy at the same college, with the same awarding university, is routed to the international route. Two programmes at one address, two different CORU pathways, decided by whether the UK regulator has approved that particular programme.

Two entries in the table are marked “Pending” for HCPC approval and carry a footnote that is worth reading before enrolling anywhere in this category:

“Graduates of this programme will first have to apply through the international route of the HCPC in the UK before they can apply via CORU’s international route.”

That is two regulators in sequence, in two jurisdictions, for a course taught in Dublin. What the CORU international route involves when the assessors find gaps is set out in CORU found substantial differences in your qualification and the CORU adaptation period. Why the same degree can get different verdicts from CORU and the HCPC is in CORU vs HCPC on the same degree.

Which professions have a list at all

Approval only exists where a Registration Board’s register is open. CORU publishes approved-qualification pages for dietitians, medical scientists, occupational therapists, optometrists and dispensing opticians, physiotherapists, podiatrists, radiographers and radiation therapists, social care workers, social workers, and speech and language therapists.

If your profession has no page, that is not an omission — it means there is no approved qualification for it yet, because the register has not opened. Psychologists, counsellors and psychotherapists are in that position: boards exist, registers do not. The consequences, and CORU’s own inconsistent counts of how many boards there are, are in which CORU registers are actually open.

Eligibility to be approved at all is geographically limited

“Education Providers in the Republic of Ireland that offer programmes which lead to qualifications acting as an entry point to a given profession will be eligible to apply to the Registration Board for approval of the programme/s.”

Only providers in the Republic of Ireland can apply. So the absence of a Northern Irish, British or other overseas programme from these lists carries no information about its quality — it was never eligible. Those qualifications are handled through CORU’s Recognition Policy on the international side, which is a different assessment with a different standard.

What the lists do not carry

No dates. Unlike the UK engineering register, which is indexed by intake year, and unlike the Irish psychology society’s tables, which print accreditation end dates, CORU’s approved-qualification entries carry neither a start year nor an end year. There is no cohort field to read. Monitoring is described as ongoing, so the list is a present-tense statement — which means the only safe reading is the one you take on the day you look, and the day that matters is the day you apply to register.

No fees, no intake dates, no non-EU pricing. CORU publishes none of it, for any programme. Anything you are shown as “CORU’s fee table” for a course is not CORU’s.

No statement that you will be registered. Graduating from an approved programme is the evidence route; registration is still an application, with its own requirements including vetting and identity checks.

What to do

1. Open your profession’s page, not the index, and read the entry that matches the exact wording on your parchment — award title and awarding body.
2. If the entry has a clause after the title, treat it as a condition, and check that your own route to the award satisfies it.
3. If you are choosing where to study in Ireland, ask the provider one question in writing: is this specific programme on CORU’s approved qualifications list for this profession? A UK university’s accreditation of an Irish-taught programme is not the same answer.
4. If your profession has no page, do not read that as a rejection — check whether the register is open at all.
5. If you qualified outside the Republic of Ireland, ignore these lists and go to the Recognition Policy on CORU’s international applicants page. The approved list is not the standard you will be assessed against.

What this page does not do

We do not mirror CORU’s lists and we cannot tell you whether your qualification is on one. CORU’s own pages are short, free, and authoritative; ours is only a guide to reading them. Whether a particular qualification satisfies a Registration Board is a decision only that Board can make.