An Irish NARIC comparability statement does not register you — and QQI says so on the same page it gives you the statement

A NARIC Ireland comparability statement is free, it downloads in seconds, and it looks official. It is also, in QQI’s own words, generic, non-personalised, and not a legal document. It does not register you with anything. If your goal is to work in a regulated profession in Ireland, the statement is at best an attachment to a different application — and several Irish regulators never ask for it at all.

What QQI says, in the five lines it prints under its own service

QQI publishes five conditions immediately beneath the description of the NARIC Ireland database. Read them in order, because they answer the question most people are actually asking:

“a comparability statement only provides advice and is not a legal document; your qualification should be awarded by a nationally recognised awarding body in your country of origin; comparability statements are generic and non-personalised; 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; If you have a professional qualification, decisions on recognition are made by the appropriate Irish authority for your profession.”

And separately, under the heading Professional Qualifications Recognition:

“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.”

That is as plain as a regulator gets. The body that issues the statement has told you, on the page where it issues it, that the statement does not speak to the question of whether you may practise.

Why “generic and non-personalised” is the load-bearing phrase

A comparability statement is issued against a qualification type from a country, not against your documents. Nobody at QQI has looked at your transcript, verified your award, or confirmed that you hold the thing you say you hold. QQI’s guidance to employers makes the division of labour explicit: “Employers should verify and authenticate qualifications in the usual way”, and “The decision to recognise a qualification is the responsibility of the employer.”

This is not a criticism of the service — it is the service. A free, instant, downloadable document cannot also be a personal assessment. But it means two things follow that people routinely get wrong:

1. It cannot be forged out of nothing and it cannot prove anything about you. Anyone can download the statement for a Bachelor of Engineering from any listed country. Holding the PDF is not evidence you hold the degree.
2. It cannot be “not enough” in the way a paid assessment can be. It is not an assessment. If a body tells you your statement is insufficient, it is not asking for a better statement; it is asking for a different kind of document entirely.

There is a further limit QQI states 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 without an award type is a thinner answer than most readers expect.

Which Irish body actually decides, by profession

Below are the bodies that run their own assessment, in each case with the mechanism they publish. None of them delegates the decision to NARIC Ireland.

Health and social care professions — CORU. CORU’s Registration Boards act as Competent Authorities and assess overseas qualifications themselves. Its policy states the effect of that assessment with unusual precision: “Recognition of a qualification by the Competent Authority/Registration Board has no function, effect or status in the State other than to demonstrate that an applicant holds an approved qualification in the relevant profession for the purpose of registration in accordance with Section 38 of the Act.” The assessment is against the Standards of Proficiency for the profession, not against an NFQ level. See what happens when CORU finds your qualification is not equivalent.

Teaching — the Teaching Council. Applications are decided by a Qualifications Panel made up of Council members. The Council states that it “assesses your qualification to ensure it is of a comparable standard to those achieved by graduates of accredited programmes in the Republic of Ireland”, and that shortfalls become conditions on your registration. Post-primary applicants are additionally measured against published subject criteria — see the subject criteria your degree is measured against.

Solicitors — the Law Society of Ireland. This is the one place in this list where a NARIC statement has a defined, published use, and even there it is not determinative. For an exemption from the Preliminary Examination, the Society requires “evidence that your degree is equivalent to a level 7 degree, or higher award, on the Irish National Framework of Qualifications (INFQ)”, and says: “It is recommended that the NARIC report on your degree should accompany your application.” Recommended, with an €80 application fee and a decision by the Education Officer. See the Preliminary Examination and who actually has to sit it.

Architecture — the RIAI. The RIAI runs its own Qualification Evaluation: “A Qualification Evaluation of a non-Irish qualification is part of the Route B2/C2 process and required to access the postgraduate examination in Professional Practice.” An NFQ comparability statement is not a substitute for it. See how Ireland recognises an overseas architecture qualification.

Engineering — Engineers Ireland. Its own sentence: “To join Engineers Ireland, your qualification should be recognised through our international agreements or else we will need to individually assess your prior qualifications, skills and experience.” The relevant agreement is the Washington Accord, not the NFQ. See the route for a degree that is not accredited.

Psychology — the Psychological Society of Ireland. Equivalence is decided by its Graduate Membership Committee against the PSI’s own accreditation guidelines, on the basis of a Graduate Membership Application Clarification form and a full academic transcript. The PSI defines equivalence in terms of subject coverage and research competence, not framework level.

The one place the statement genuinely helps

A comparability statement is useful for the decisions QQI actually names: employment where the employer is not a regulator, admission to further study, and cases where someone simply needs to understand what an unfamiliar award is. QQI’s own framing for employers — that applicants “may link the comparability statement for their qualification as part of the recruitment process” — describes the realistic use well. It is context for a reader, produced by a national authority, at no cost.

It is not, and QQI does not claim it is, a permission.

How to work out which document you need

1. Name the decision-maker. Employer, university admissions office, or statutory regulator. These are three different decisions under three different rulebooks — see a skills assessment, a registration and a university admission are three separate decisions.
2. If it is a statutory regulator, go to that regulator’s own “international applicants” page first and read its document list. Every body above publishes one.
3. Download the free NARIC Ireland statement anyway if your qualification is listed. It costs nothing and some of the bodies above will accept it as supporting evidence.
4. Do not buy a paid statement from anyone until a named decision-maker has asked for one in writing. The equivalent trap on the UK side is set out at do you actually need a UK ENIC statement.
5. If you are dealing with both jurisdictions, read which recognition statement to get first before paying for either.

What this page does not do

It does not tell you whether your particular qualification will be accepted by any Irish regulator. Every body listed above assesses individually and holds the discretion to decide. This page sets out what each body says it does; the outcome in your case belongs to that body alone.

It also does not cover immigration. Permission to enter or work in Ireland is a separate matter decided by the Irish immigration authorities, and nothing on this page bears on it. Go to the official Irish immigration service for that.

All quotations above were read from the bodies’ own pages on 3 September 2026.