Irish psychology conversion courses are on the undergraduate accreditation table, not a postgraduate one — and the expiry column is free text

Three things about the Irish psychology conversion list surprise almost everyone who opens it.

First, conversion courses are not on a postgraduate list. They are on the undergraduate one. The Psychological Society of Ireland accredits them under its standards for programmes “leading to a first qualification in psychology”, so a one-year MSc sits in the same table as a four-year BA. A reader who clicks “PSI Accredited Postgraduate Courses” looking for a conversion master’s will not find it there.

Second, the accreditation column is prose, not data. Read on 3 September 2026 it carried at least four different date formats — closed ranges, “Accredited until” with a three-letter month and four-digit year, the same with a two-digit year, and one written out as a sentence. There is no machine-readable expiry field, which is precisely why every third-party “list of PSI accredited courses” you will find is a snapshot of a particular afternoon.

Third, several rows had already passed their stated end date on the day we read them. That is not evidence that those courses lost accreditation — and the rest of this page explains why that distinction matters more than anything else here.

What PSI accreditation is, and what it is not

The society’s own definition is narrow and honest about its scope: accreditation is “the process undertaken by PSI to ensure that psychology courses in Ireland are of the highest standards for training and practice in professional psychology”, carried out by “examining documentation associated with the course and an on-site visit”.

It is a learned society’s accreditation, not a statutory approval. This is the difference that most changes how you should weigh it. In Ireland the statutory health and social care regulator, CORU, publishes approved-qualification lists for ten professions — and psychology is not among them, because the Psychologists Registration Board’s register has not opened. There is therefore no statutory list of approved psychology qualifications in Ireland at all, and PSI’s accreditation is the only published standard in the field. What that means for anyone planning a career on the assumption that Irish psychology is regulated the way physiotherapy is, is set out in which CORU registers are actually open.

What PSI accreditation does buy is stated plainly: “Completion of a PSI accredited undergraduate degree with a Second Class Honours or above or completion of a PSI accredited Psychology Conversion Course with an overall pass mark of 50 per cent confers eligibility for graduate membership with the Psychological Society of Ireland.” Graduate membership is the gate to accredited professional training. It is not a licence and not a job title.

Trap one: the level of the award tells you nothing

Scan the conversion entries and the award titles run across at least three levels. On the same undergraduate table, and all accredited on the same basis, sit conversion routes styled as an MSc (Dublin City University, Maynooth), an MA (University of Limerick), and a Higher Diploma (University of Galway, and higher diplomas in psychology at Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork and University College Dublin). Dublin Business School’s route is a “Higher Diploma in Arts in Psychology”.

An MSc is not a stronger conversion than an HDip in PSI’s eyes; they are accredited against the same standard. And conversely, holding a master’s-titled award does not make it a postgraduate qualification in psychology — it makes it a first qualification in psychology that happens to be delivered at master’s level. Anyone comparing an Irish conversion route with a second bachelor’s should read conversion MSc versus a second BSc.

Trap two: one university, two near-identical entries

The clearest example on the table is a single institution listing both an HDip Psychology (Conversion) and an HDip Psychology (Full) as separate accredited entries. Two rows, one word apart, and they are not the same programme.

The general rule: the parenthetical is the decisive part of the string. “(Conversion)”, “(Full)”, “(Part-Time)”, “(online)”, “(Joint honours)”, “(Psychology Major)” — PSI has no delivery-mode field and no programme-type field, so those distinctions live inside the award title. If you are matching your own offer letter against the table, match the whole string including the brackets.

That is also why nobody can honestly publish a “delivery mode” column for this table: the underlying data does not have one. Some rows say “(online)” and most say nothing, and saying nothing does not mean on-campus.

Trap three: an elapsed end date is not proof of lapsed accreditation

This is the discipline that separates a useful reading of the table from a harmful one.

Several rows on the day we read carried end dates already in the past — including entries expressed as “Accredited until Dec-25” and as closed ranges ending in 2026. It is tempting, and it would be wrong, to publish those as “no longer accredited”.

A published end date that has passed is a fact about the page, not a fact about the course. It is consistent with at least three quite different situations: accreditation genuinely lapsed; accreditation was renewed and the row has not been updated; or a review is in progress. PSI does not annotate which. The only body that can tell you which of the three applies to a given programme is PSI, and the only safe way to use an elapsed date is as a prompt to ask, in writing, before you accept an offer.

We apply the same rule to ourselves: we are not going to name courses as expired on the strength of a stale cell, and you should distrust any site that does.

The related risk — accreditation status changing between the year you look and the year you start — is covered in the conversion course accreditation year trap.

Trap four: the entry threshold is stated three different ways

PSI’s accreditation page gives the conversion threshold as an overall pass mark of 50 per cent; its course-list page states the requirement for graduate membership as a 2:2 or above; and its page for applicants who qualified abroad uses a third formulation. Those are PSI’s own three phrasings of what ought to be one number. They were documented, with the exact wording of each, in BPS or PSI conversion course, and the conclusion there holds: get your own threshold confirmed by PSI in writing rather than inferring it from whichever page you landed on.

Trap five: institution names, annotated in place

The table carries its own renaming history — technological universities listed with their predecessor institutes in brackets, and one national-university constituent college listed under a name it no longer markets under. Search for the name on your parchment, then look for it as a predecessor in brackets. There is also a separate link on the page to historical information on courses previously accredited, which is where a course that has dropped off the current table may still be documented.

The one thing on this page most course pages omit

PSI publishes a notice about doctoral training that no university prospectus we have seen puts as plainly. Its substance: some doctorate programmes in clinical, educational and counselling psychology may not be open to applicants from outside the European Economic Area, because where those programmes are funded by the health service the trainees are employed as well as enrolled, so a student permission alone is not enough. Research doctorates are treated differently.

If a conversion course is step one of a plan whose step three is a funded professional doctorate, read that notice on PSI’s own page before you pay a deposit on step one. We do not give immigration advice and PSI points readers to the Irish immigration service; so do we.

What the table does not carry

No fees, EU or non-EU. PSI publishes none, for any course. Every fee figure attributed to this list comes from somewhere else — normally the provider’s own page, which is the right source and which changes annually. The size of the gap between the domestic and international figure is discussed in why conversion course fees differ so much.

No intake dates, no entry requirements, no sponsorship information. The provider’s page is the only source, and whether a provider can sponsor a student is a separate register maintained by the state, not by PSI. See online conversion courses and the student route.

No accreditation start year for most rows. Some rows give a range and therefore a start; most give only an end. If you need to know whether a course was accredited in an earlier year, the current table cannot answer it and the historical page is the place to look.

One practical note about the source itself: PSI’s site rejected ordinary command-line requests when we tested it, and had to be read in a browser. That is a common reason third-party copies of this table go stale without anyone noticing — automated checks fail silently. Read the original.

What to do

1. Look on the undergraduate list, not the postgraduate one, for any conversion course.
2. Match the full award title including the brackets. “(Conversion)” and “(Full)” are different programmes.
3. Read the accreditation status cell for your intended start year, and if the date has passed or falls during your course, ask PSI directly rather than assuming either way.
4. Get the entry threshold in writing from PSI, because its own pages state it three ways.
5. If a funded professional doctorate is the eventual goal, read PSI’s access notice first, and take the permission question to the Irish immigration service.
6. Take fees from the provider’s page, dated, and re-check them before you accept.

What this page does not do

We do not reproduce PSI’s table, we do not publish a competing list, and we do not tell you whether any named course is accredited today. Only PSI can, and where its published dates have elapsed, only PSI can say what that means. Nothing here is a prediction about graduate membership or about admission to any programme.