Occupational therapist jobs in Ireland: CORU route (2026)

• Your occupational therapy degree or diploma qualifies you to work as an OT in the country that awarded it.
• The OT regulator or ministry there will sign that you are eligible to practise; active registration there is not required.
• Where OT is not a regulated profession in your country of training, an employer can verify at least one year of OT practice within the last ten years.
• Your role as an OT involved comparable activities to Irish practice: occupation-focused assessment, goal setting and intervention, not only exercise therapy or rehabilitation assistance.
• Your course and placements can be mapped to the five domains of the Board's standards, especially domain 5 (professional knowledge and skills), which covers occupational science, activity analysis and grading, assistive technology and manual handling.
• You hold IELTS Academic 7.0 (6.5 minimum per band), OET Occupational Therapy at B in three parts and C+ in one, or Cambridge C1 Advanced grade C, unless you meet a CORU exemption.
• You can produce police certificates for each country where you lived for more than a year since turning 18, and you will complete Garda vetting through CORU.
• You can swear CORU's statutory declaration on fitness to practise and character.

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

   1. Decide whether you are a UK fast-track applicant

   CORU names all UK BSc programmes in Occupational Therapy and the UK MSc in Occupational Therapy as Commonly Aligned Standards qualifications. If you hold one and can register in the UK, you choose that pathway, and your course is not assessed. Graduates from anywhere else, including Australia, South Africa, India and the Philippines, use the full recognition route.
2. 2

   2. Map your training to the OT standards of proficiency

   The Occupational Therapists Registration Board standards have five domains, and the OT-specific content sits in domain 5: occupational science and the person-environment-occupation relationship, conceptual models, activity analysis and grading, adapting environments, group work, assistive technologies and manual handling. Go through each item and note where your course taught and assessed it. Applicants trained in programmes with a strong biomedical or physical rehabilitation focus often find the occupation-based items hardest to evidence.
3. 3

   3. Reconstruct your practice education record

   For every placement, ask the university or site to confirm the setting, the client group, the hours, the learning outcomes and the name and profession of your supervisor, signed and stamped. The standards expect work with people of all ages in acute, rehabilitation and community settings, so a gap in mental health, paediatric or community practice is the shortfall assessors most commonly identify. Never include identifiable client details.
4. 4

   4. Add post-qualification OT experience and learning

   CORU's policy lets assessors offset differences with experience and lifelong learning, so get each OT employer to complete CORU's employer verification form describing your caseload and setting. Short courses in areas such as sensory integration, splinting, home assessment or seating can count if you keep certificates and outlines.
5. 5

   5. Meet the language requirement

   Book IELTS Academic (taken in person), OET Occupational Therapy (at home or at a centre) or Cambridge C1 Advanced, and aim for the Board's scores with results less than two years old when you submit. If your OT degree and placements were in English and you graduated within two years, ask your university for the exemption letter instead.
6. 6

   6. Gather verification and character documents

   Your OT regulator or ministry signs the competent authority form, your university signs the education form, and you add certified ID and transcripts, a statutory declaration, police certificates and the vetting invitation form. The full document list and certification rules are on our CORU regulator guide.
7. 7

   7. Submit the international qualification application

   Create a CORU portal account, choose the international qualification application, list your OT placements and posts, upload and pay. CORU acknowledges within a month and tells you what is missing; a file still incomplete six months later is closed and a fresh fee is due.
8. 8

   8. Board decision on your OT qualification

   Once complete, an OT practice assessor and an OT education assessor report to the Occupational Therapists Registration Board, which recognises the qualification, offers a compensation measure, or finds it ineligible because the profession is not comparable. CORU's target is 3 months from a complete file, extendable to 4.
9. 9

   9. Choose and complete a compensation measure, if offered

   You have 30 days to pick an aptitude test (€500, sat in Ireland) or a period of adaptation of up to 3 years under a registered OT. For adaptation you must find the post and supervisor yourself and have your proposal approved before starting. The HSE pay scales include an Occupational Therapy Adaptation grade (€39,590 from 1 June 2026), but whether a service has such a post varies.
10. 10

    10. Join the register and plan your renewals

    CORU lets you lodge the registration application once the recognition file is complete, so the two run side by side. After registration you may use the title. OT registration renews each year by 31 March, and you must keep CPD records against the Board's requirements.

• Paper assessment instead of a licensing exam

  Ireland has no OT board exam for overseas applicants. Two occupational therapists read your file against the Board's standards, and you only face an assessment if they find a gap your experience does not close and you choose the aptitude test.

• OT aptitude test

  The test is confined to the substantial differences the Board found in your OT training and may include the professional rules for practice in Ireland. CORU says it is held in Ireland, offered within six months of your choosing it, costs €500 and may be repeated once.

• OT period of adaptation

  Supervised OT practice in Ireland, for at most 3 years, under a registered occupational therapist, sometimes with academic modules attached. The Board approves your proposal before you start, and reports from you and the supervisor at the end decide the outcome.

• Occupational Therapists Registration Board scores: IELTS Academic 7.0 overall with no band below 6.5; OET Occupational Therapy with grade B (350) in three sub-tests and C+ (300) or better in the fourth; or Cambridge C1 Advanced at grade C.
• Results must be under two years old on the day you submit. IELTS has to be the in-person test; OET's at-home format is accepted. Two sittings can be combined if both are with the same provider within six months and both meet the overall score, but IELTS One Skill Retake and single OET sub-tests are not accepted.
• Under CORU's language policy for applications from 8 May 2026, you are exempt if you hold a Commonly Aligned (UK) OT qualification taught in English, or your university confirms your OT course and placements were in English or Irish and you graduated within the last two years.
• A third exemption covers OTs who have lived and practised through English for at least two of the last five years in a country where English is the only official language, shown by employer letters. CORU keeps the list of qualifying countries itself.
• Give CORU your IELTS TRF number or OET candidate number so it can check the result online.

Estimate your total cost

• Allow several weeks, sometimes months, for universities and placement sites abroad to stamp OT placement records; this is the slowest part for most applicants.
• Month 1 after submission: CORU acknowledges the OT application and lists anything missing; you have six months to complete it.
• Up to 3 months (extendable to 4) from a complete file for the Occupational Therapists Registration Board decision, under CORU's policy.
• UK OT graduates on the Commonly Aligned Standards route skip the assessor stage; CORU gives no fixed time but describes the wait as greatly reduced.
• If a gap is found, add six months or more for an aptitude test, or the length of an approved adaptation placement (at most 3 years).

HSE consolidated pay scales from 1 June 2026. Your starting point on the scale is set by the employer under HSE rules. Private and voluntary employers outside the public pay agreement set their own pay.

• Occupational therapist (staff grade)

  €45,514 to €65,068

• Occupational therapist, senior

  €65,197 to €76,767

• Clinical specialist occupational therapist

  €72,119 to €83,689

• Occupational therapist manager

  €78,592 to €94,350

• Occupational therapy adaptation grade

  €39,590

• HSE acute hospitals and voluntary hospitals.
• HSE primary care, disability services and children's disability network teams.
• Mental health services.
• Older persons' services, rehabilitation units and nursing homes.
• Private practice and independent providers.

• Occupational Therapist is on the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment's Critical Skills Occupations List (SOC 2222, therapy professionals), so a job offer of at least 2 years can support a Critical Skills Employment Permit without a Labour Market Needs Test.
• The Department's floor for listed jobs is €40,904 with a relevant degree (€36,848 for recent graduates). The HSE OT staff grade starts at €45,514 from 1 June 2026, above that floor, and for public sector and Section 38 roles the Department says the pay agreement rate applies.
• The Occupational Therapy Adaptation grade (€39,590) sits below the general floor, so if your first post is an adaptation post, confirm with the employer how the permit will be handled before you accept.
• Fees, processing times, family rights and Stamp 4 are set out in full on our Ireland country guide.

1. 1

   A DHA, DOH, MOHAP, SCFHS, QCHP or other GCC OT licence is not recognised in itself; CORU assesses the qualification you trained on, so your Gulf licence matters only as evidence of practice and standing.

2. 2

   Many Gulf OT posts are in hospital rehabilitation, paediatric centres or school-based services. Ask each employer to describe your caseload on CORU's employer verification form, because that is how Gulf work can offset a placement gap in, for example, paediatrics or neurorehabilitation.

3. 3

   If your Gulf work was mostly one client group, expect assessors to look for evidence in other areas the standards name, such as mental health or community practice, and gather course certificates that cover them.

4. 4

   The competent authority form comes from the country where you trained, not the Gulf, but keep good standing letters from each GCC regulator you held a licence with in case CORU asks.

5. 5

   You need a police certificate from every GCC country you lived in for more than a year since 18, issued within 12 months, and Gulf practice does not count towards CORU's English exemption, so book IELTS, OET Occupational Therapy 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