Irish NARIC comparability statements cost nothing — what you get for free, and the four things the free document cannot do

There is no fee for a NARIC Ireland comparability statement, no application form, and no waiting time. If your qualification is in QQI’s database you select the country, find the award, and download the PDF. If anyone quotes you a price for one, they are selling you something else.

That is the whole good news, and it is genuinely good news. The rest of this page is about what the free document is, because free and instant are consequences of a design decision, and that design decision has four hard edges.

Where it actually lives

NARIC Ireland is hosted by QQI — Quality and Qualifications Ireland — and its Foreign Qualifications Database sits on QQI’s search subdomain. QQI describes it as a “searchable Foreign Qualifications Database” that “allows you to freely download a comparability statement that compares your academic qualification to an Irish qualification of a similar major award-type and level on the Irish National Framework of Qualifications (NFQ), where possible.”

The database’s own instructions are three steps: search by the country where the qualification was issued; read the published comparability statement explaining how the qualification relates to the NFQ; download it.

One caution on how you find it. The address people most often search for, naricireland.ie, did not resolve at all when we queried it on 3 September 2026 — a public DNS lookup returned NXDOMAIN, not a redirect. Reach the database from qqi.ie rather than from a remembered address or a search result. How to check you are on the real thing is set out at telling the official QQI source from a copy.

What it costs, and how we know

Nothing. QQI’s page uses the word “freely” of the download and offers no payment step. QQI does publish a Fees Schedule, but that schedule covers its services to education and training providers; the NARIC download for an individual is not in it.

For comparison, the equivalent UK document is a paid product. UK ENIC’s Statement of Comparability page states: “The service costs £69.60 which includes an e-Statement”, with paper copies at £12.60 for UK delivery and £75.60 international, and refunds “only available if you submit an application and request cancellation before the evaluation team has started checking your qualifications.” Both figures were read on 3 September 2026. The two services are compared in full at UK ENIC and NARIC Ireland are not the same service.

The four hard edges

1. It is generic, not personal. QQI states it twice, in slightly different words: “comparability statements are generic and non-personalised” and “NARIC Ireland does not provide personalised statements.” The statement is about an award type from a country. It carries no name, and nobody has looked at your transcript. Its evidential value to a reader is therefore contextual, not probative — it tells them what the qualification is, not that you have it. QQI tells employers the rest of the job is theirs: “Employers should verify and authenticate qualifications in the usual way.”

2. It is advice, not a decision. QQI’s words: “a comparability statement only provides advice and is not a legal document”, and “decisions on recognising your qualification for employment, training or educational purposes will be made by the individual employer, competent authority or education and training admissions staff.”

3. It does not touch regulated professions. “We do not comment on professional awards, regulated professions, licences to practice or agreements made between different sectors of industry from one or more countries.” If you need to practise as a nurse, a physiotherapist, a teacher, an architect or a solicitor in Ireland, this document is not the one that decides. Which body does is set out at an Irish NARIC statement does not register you.

4. Coverage is partial, and the shortfall has two shapes. The obvious one: your qualification may not be listed. The less obvious one is printed on the database itself — “not all awards can be compared with a specific major award type in the Irish NFQ and have, therefore, been compared with a level on the NFQ only.” A level-only comparison is a real answer, but it is a thinner one, and it will not tell a reader whether your award corresponds to an Ordinary Bachelor Degree or an Honours Bachelor Degree. That distinction matters in Ireland — see where an overseas bachelor’s, diploma or HND usually lands.

What else is free on the same page, which almost nobody uses

Three things sit alongside the database and cost nothing.

Guides in ten languages. QQI publishes “Guide to using the NARIC Ireland database” as a PDF in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Gaeilge, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian.

Country “rough guides”. For three cohorts QQI has published free guides pulling together “our current information on qualifications and the education and training system from each country … into a single document to support recognition decisions” — currently Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan. They are aimed at “recruiters, guidance personnel, information officers, employers, education and training providers, schools, Institutions, competent authorities, and credential evaluators”, and they carry QQI’s standard caveat: “Recognition decisions are not made by NARIC Ireland.”

A statement of the position for people with protection status. QQI records that people “with refugee status or who have subsidiary protection, have the right to seek and enter employment, to carry on business, trade or professions, and to access education and training as a citizen”, and that its services “support the fair recognition of qualifications from home in line with the Lisbon Recognition Convention”. It also invites contact about the Council of Europe’s European Qualifications Passport for Refugees, of which it says QQI is a recent signatory. If documents are the obstacle rather than the level, that is the route to ask about.

QQI also publishes guidance addressed to employers, which is worth reading before you send anything to one — it tells them the statement is “generic, based on careful research and are fully quality assured”, that “Applicants may link the comparability statement for their qualification as part of the recruitment process”, and that “Employers should verify and authenticate qualifications in the usual way.” Sending the employer that page alongside your statement often saves an argument.

One coverage figure QQI publishes two ways

On the same page, QQI describes the database as holding “over 2,000 qualifications from more than 170 countries” in one passage and “over 2000 qualifications from more than 160 countries” in another. Both sentences were still there when we re-read the page on 3 September 2026.

This is not a gotcha; it is a reason not to trust any coverage number you are quoted by a third party. The only figure that matters is whether your qualification is in there, and you can check that yourself in under a minute at no cost.

If your qualification is not listed

QQI publishes a separate route: “If your qualification is not listed in the database, you can apply for advice on the general academic recognition of your qualification here”, linking to its NARIC award-queries form. That is a query to QQI rather than an instant download, so it takes time; QQI does not publish a turnaround on the page we read. It is still the correct next step, and it is the step that generates a listing for the next person with your qualification.

Do not substitute a paid third-party evaluation for it without first checking whether the body you are applying to actually accepts one.

What to do

1. Search the database by country before you spend anything anywhere. It takes a minute.
2. Download the statement if it is there, and keep it with your transcript — it costs nothing to have.
3. Ask the body you are applying to, in writing, what document it wants. Several Irish bodies will accept the free statement as supporting evidence; several run their own assessment instead.
4. If your qualification is not listed, use QQI’s award-queries form rather than assuming the answer is no.

What this page does not do

It does not tell you what NFQ level your qualification will be compared to. That is a published finding of QQI’s, qualification by qualification, and the only reliable way to learn it is to look yours up. It also does not tell you whether any employer, university or regulator will accept the statement — QQI says plainly that this decision is theirs.

Fees and page wording were read on 3 September 2026 and both bodies revise their material continuously.