National University of Ireland

Basic information

National External Quality Assurance Requirements

  • Institutional reviews
    The aim of review is to provide an independent external review of the institution’s own internal quality assurance procedures.
  • Programme validation
    Not required for eight universities together with the Dublin Institute of Technology and Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, which have degree awarding powers i.e. the possibility to validate and award their own qualifications
  • Delegated authority to make awards
    will exempt education providers to undergo an external programme validation procedure.
  • Focused reviews
    may lead to withdrawal of approval of a QA procedures. The procedures is invoked if there are reasons for concern with a particular higher education provider.
  • Further information on external quality assurance in Ireland

External Quality Assurance Reports and Decisions

Institutional level

Institutional evaluation, University College Cork
Part of the obligatory external QA system
Institutional quality monitoring and review, Maynooth University
Part of the obligatory external QA system
Institutional quality monitoring and review, University of Galway
Part of the obligatory external QA system
Institutional quality monitoring and review, University College Dublin
Part of the obligatory external QA system
Institutional quality monitoring and review
Part of the obligatory external QA system
Institutional quality monitoring and review, University College Cork
Part of the obligatory external QA system
Institutional quality monitoring and review, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

Programme level

Decision: positive Joint programme
Global Change: Ecosystem Science and Policy (second cycle degree)
Decision: positive Joint programme
International Humanitarian Action (NOHA+) (second cycle degree)
Decision: positive with conditions or restrictions Joint programme
Redesigning the Post-Industrial City (second cycle degree)
Decision: positive
School of Veterinary Medicine (degree)
Decision: positive with conditions or restrictions Joint programme
Superdiversity in Education, Organisations and Society (second cycle degree)

Verifiable Credentials

A Verifiable Credential (VC) is a digitally-signed and thus tamper-evident document containing information on a subject (e.g. personal information, entitlements of an individual, degrees held by an individual or accreditation of a higher education institution). Quality assurance results recorded in DEQAR can be downloaded as W3C-compatible Verifiable Credentials.

Currently, two types of credentials can be issued:

EBSI Verifiable Accreditations (VA) can be used by a higher education institution in the context of the EBSI Early Adopters programme.

  • The VA allows the institution to prove its external quality assurance on the Trusted Issuer Registry (TIR). EBSI VAs are only issued for external quality assurance results with an official status in a national system (“part of obligatory EQA system”).
  • At present, the higher education institution’s EBSI DID needs to be communicated to EQAR and recorded in DEQAR manually at the moment. If you are a higher education institution participating in EBSI, please contact us to register your DID.
  • EBSI VAs are issued by EQAR under its DID did:ebsi:zk4bhCepWSYp9RhZkRPiwUL.

DEQAR Format Verifiable Credentials primarily serve as a proof of concept and public demonstrator currently.

  • DEQAR Format VCs are based on the plain W3C Recommendation and our own data model. While they closely follow the EBSI Schema, no EBSI-specific or EU-specific elements or data types are used.
  • The higher education institution is identified by its DEQAR URI in this case.
  • DEQAR Format VCs are issued by EQAR under its DID did:web:data.deqar.eu.

Please note: this is an experimental feature.