Work as a dietitian in Ireland: CORU recognition (2026)

• Your qualification is in dietetics or nutrition and dietetics and entitles you to practise as a dietitian where it was awarded.
• The dietetics regulator or ministry in that country can sign CORU's verification form; you do not need to be registered there now.
• Where dietetics has no regulator in your training country, a dietetics employer can verify at least one year of practice within the last ten years.
• Your course included supervised clinical dietetic practice that your university can document, not only food service or community nutrition projects.
• Your training or later experience covers the five domains of the Dietitians Registration Board standards, including food safety law and therapeutic menu planning.
• You hold IELTS Academic 7.0 (no element under 6.5), OET Dietetics at the Board's grades, or Cambridge C1 Advanced grade C, unless an exemption applies.
• You can obtain police certificates for every country where you spent over a year as an adult, and pass Irish eVetting.
• You can declare that you are fit and proper to practise, with no unresolved fitness to practise issues elsewhere.

Check your route with the route finder

• CORUCORU, Health and Social Care Professionals Council

  Allied health and social care professions

  How to register with the CORU

1. 1

   Decide between the UK fast track and full assessment

   Graduates of UK BSc or MSc programmes in Dietetics, Nutrition and Dietetics, or Human Nutrition and Dietetics who are eligible for UK registration go through the Commonly Aligned Standards pathway, which skips qualification assessment and needs far fewer documents. A dietitian trained anywhere else, including someone who later worked in the UK, goes through the full recognition route.
2. 2

   Map your training to the dietetics standards

   Read the Dietitians Registration Board standards of proficiency and list where your degree covered each item in domain 5: pre-clinical and clinical sciences, clinical and community dietetics, nutritional epidemiology, food law and HACCP, food service processes, therapeutic and modified texture menus, and artificial nutrition support. Assessors express any gap in terms of these standards, so a short mapping note in your own words helps them find the evidence.
3. 3

   Get your placement record stamped by the university

   Ask your university for the detailed syllabus and a placement breakdown: settings, weeks, specialties such as diabetes, renal or paediatrics, and confirmation that a qualified dietitian supervised you. This is where dietetics files most often stall, because some universities take weeks to stamp historical placement logs. Remove patient names and dates of birth from any case records.
4. 4

   Gather work evidence that closes likely gaps

   CORU must consider whether experience or later learning addresses a difference before it imposes a compensation measure. If your degree was light on enteral and parenteral feeding, food service or public health, collect employer letters and course certificates showing you have done that work since. Your most recent employer completes CORU's employer verification form.
5. 5

   Take the English test the Board accepts

   Book IELTS Academic (paper or computer at a centre), the Dietetics version of OET, or Cambridge C1 Advanced, and aim for the Board's scores from the first sitting. The result must be under two years old when you submit, and CORU combines a maximum of two sittings with one provider.
6. 6

   Complete the CORU paperwork

   Certification of copies, the statutory declaration, police certificates and the eVetting form follow CORU's common rules for all professions; the CORU regulator guide lists them in full. Build in time for police certificates from each country, as these are usually the slowest item.
7. 7

   Submit on the portal and answer queries quickly

   Choose the international qualification application, pay the fee and upload the file. CORU acknowledges it within a month and says what is missing. If nothing arrives within six months the application is closed and a new one means a new fee, so chase slow universities early.
8. 8

   Dietetics assessors review the file

   A dietitian with clinical practice expertise and a dietitian educator assess your evidence, and the Board decides within three months of the file being complete, extendable to four. If the file does not show whether experience covers a gap, CORU should tell you and let you send more evidence.
9. 9

   Choose and complete a compensation measure if offered

   You have thirty days to pick an aptitude test (€500, sat in Ireland) or a period of adaptation of up to three years under a registered dietitian. An adaptation normally has to start within eighteen months of Board approval of your proposal, and the HSE pay scales include a Dietetics Adaptation grade, although posts depend on employers.
10. 10

    Join the register and keep it current

    Recognition, eVetting and the €100 registration fee lead to your entry on the dietitians' register. Dietitians renew by 31 October every year and must keep continuing professional development records for CORU.

• No entry exam on the standard dietetics route

  The Dietitians Registration Board does not set a dietetics licensing exam. It reviews your documents, and only sets a test if it finds a substantial difference and you choose the test over supervised practice.

• Aptitude test for dietitians

  The test covers only the gaps named in the Board's decision, such as clinical nutrition support or food service management, and may include Irish professional rules. CORU must offer it within six months of you opting for it, it normally has to be sat within a year of notification, it costs €500, and one repeat is allowed.

• Period of adaptation in an Irish dietetics service

  You arrange supervised practice in Ireland with a registered dietitian, submit the POA proposal form, and begin only after Board approval. It can last up to three years, may include academic study, and ends with reports from you and your supervisor for the Board to assess.

• The Dietitians Registration Board accepts IELTS Academic at 7.0 overall with no element below 6.5. This level is also written into domain 5 of the dietitians' standards of proficiency.
• OET is accepted in its Dietetics version: grade B (350) in three of the four sub-tests and at least C+ (300) in the remaining one.
• Cambridge C1 Advanced is accepted at grade C.
• Results must be dated within two years of your application. IELTS must be taken in person at a centre; OET's online and at-home formats are accepted. CORU accepts at most two sittings with the same provider within six months, with no IELTS One Skill Retake or single OET sub-test resits.
• Since 8 May 2026 CORU exempts you from testing if you hold an approved or Commonly Aligned qualification, if your dietetics degree and placements were in English and finished within the last two years, or if you have practised for two of the last five years in a country where English is the only official language.
• A dietitian trained in English in a country where English is not the sole official language (India, the Philippines or most of the Gulf, for example) usually still needs a test unless the degree is very recent.

Estimate your total cost

• Before you apply, allow several weeks for your university to return stamped placement records and the verification form, and longer for older degrees or closed programmes.
• CORU acknowledges a dietetics file within a month; you then have six months to complete it.
• The Board has three months from a complete file to decide, with a possible extension to four, according to CORU's recognition policy.
• UK dietetics graduates on the Commonly Aligned Standards route avoid assessment, and CORU describes the time as greatly reduced without giving a figure.
• If the Board offers a compensation measure, the aptitude test must be offered within six months of you choosing it and is normally sat within a year; an approved adaptation can last up to three years.

HSE consolidated pay scales from 1 June 2026 (the HSE uses the spelling 'dietician'). Private and food-industry employers set their own pay.

• Dietician (staff grade)

  €45,514 to €65,068

• Dietician, senior

  €65,197 to €76,767

• Clinical specialist dietician

  €72,119 to €83,689

• Dietician manager

  €78,592 to €94,350

• Dietetics adaptation grade

  €39,590

• HSE and voluntary acute hospitals, including renal, oncology, ICU and paediatric dietetics.
• HSE primary care and community dietetic services.
• Disability and older persons' services.
• Private hospitals and private practice.
• Enteral nutrition companies (registration is still needed to use the title).

• Dietician is listed under SOC 2219 on the Critical Skills Occupations List, so a two-year dietetics job offer can support a Critical Skills Employment Permit with no Labour Market Needs Test.
• For listed roles the Department's floor is €40,904 (€36,848 for recent graduates). HSE and Section 38 dietetics posts are paid at the public pay agreement rate instead, and the dietician staff grade starts at €45,514 from 1 June 2026, above that floor. Check that a Dietetics Adaptation post at €39,590 still meets the permit rules before accepting it.
• Private practice and food-industry dietetics jobs set their own salaries, so confirm the offer meets the Critical Skills threshold, and that the employer needs you to be CORU registered for the role.
• Full permit details, including fees, family reunification and the move to Stamp 4, are on the Ireland country guide.

1. 1

   A Gulf dietitian licence (for example a clinical dietitian licence from DHA, DOH, MOHAP, SCFHS or QCHP) does not transfer. CORU assesses your original dietetics degree, experience and later learning; a Gulf licensing exam pass is not among the evidence it lists.

2. 2

   Gulf hospital roles in diabetes, renal, oncology or ICU nutrition support are good evidence for the clinical parts of domain 5. Ask your employer to describe your caseload and any enteral or parenteral feeding work on the verification form.

3. 3

   Hospital food service experience in the Gulf, such as diet office work, therapeutic menus or texture-modified diets, can help with the Board's food service and food safety standards, which many overseas degrees cover only lightly.

4. 4

   The competent authority form comes from the country where you qualified, but CORU can also ask your Gulf regulator for a certificate of good standing, so keep your Gulf licence renewed until you are registered.

5. 5

   Get police clearance from each Gulf country where you lived for more than a year as an adult. Gulf practice does not count for the English exemption, so book IELTS, OET Dietetics or Cambridge C1.

• Application plan with every step, fee and deadline

• Document checklist tailored to you, and a review of each document before upload

• Timeline built around the regulator's closure windows and document validity periods

• Help completing the application forms accurately and consistently

• Support with profession-specific evidence, such as the HCPC standards of proficiency mapping

• Guidance on certificates of good standing, references and certified translations

• Preparation for identity checks and declarations on health and character

• Tracking your application and help responding to regulator requests

• Next steps after the decision: exams, adaptation, PIN or licence and your first job

Regulators make all registration decisions and set all fees. Our fee is separate from the regulator's fees, exam fees and translation costs.

What our registration and licensing support includesPackages and fees