Teaching Council of Ireland
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-23
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

I thank the Senator for raising this matter. The Teaching Council is the independent regulatory body of the teaching profession in Ireland. It was established under the Teaching Council Act 2001, as amended. The council's role is to protect the public by promoting and regulating professional standards in teaching. This is carried out through the statutory registration of teachers, ensuring a highly qualified teaching profession whose members meet and uphold high standards of professional competence and conduct.
As a statutory professional standards body, the Teaching Council is required by law to properly determine and authenticate the relevant standards and qualifications of all applicants for registration. One of the ways the council guarantees and regulates standards is by ensuring that all teachers entering the profession in the Republic of Ireland have met the required standards. Ireland, like the majority of regulating countries assesses qualifications awarded outside the State for alignment with the standards which apply in the State. This is a core principle of the EU Directive 2005/36/EU on the recognition of professional qualifications.
The Teaching Council receives approximately 680 eligible applications annually from teachers who have qualified outside of the Republic of Ireland. The qualifications of teachers who qualified outside the State are processed in line with the EU directive and assessed to ensure they are of a comparable standard to those achieved by graduates of accredited initial teacher education programmes in the Republic of Ireland.
A person deemed to be a fully qualified teacher has completed a recognised teacher education qualification and programme of induction. A person must provide an official letter, confirming they are a fully qualified teacher, from the relevant teacher registration body or competent authority in the country of qualification. Post-primary teachers must also meet the post-primary curricular subject requirements for at least one approved curricular subject. In the case of those seeking registration as post-primary teachers in the subject of physical education, this could include, for example, diplomas or certificates in areas that are relevant to the subject being assessed and which may contribute to the overall assessment outcome. As such, applicants who have completed the same teacher education qualification may not necessarily receive the same outcome, as the holistic assessment process considers all relevant qualifications and their professional experience. This is carried out in the interests of supporting applicants to ensure that all demonstrable knowledge, skill and competence is considered.
The Teaching Council of Ireland has confirmed to my Department that, in the last 18 months, the majority of applicants who had completed a graduate diploma in physical education accredited by Liverpool John Moore’s University were not successful in demonstrating that the qualification met the Teaching Council's curricular subject requirements for physical education.
Applications from outside the State are assessed on a holistic basis, taking account of all relevant qualifications held by the applicant and their professional experience. On that basis, it is not possible to state whether a qualification will meet the requirements for registration prior to the full assessment being completed. I may comment on a few more of the points the Senator raises in my closing remarks.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-23