A certificate is evidence. Your institution's extenuating circumstances or deferral process is the decision. Here is what an online GP can certify, what your college's own form still requires, and the deadlines that decide the outcome.
If your institution requires its own form completed and signed by a doctor — a Professional Opinion Form, a deferral form, a departmental medical form — then a certificate on its own is not what the process is asking for, and we do not complete third-party forms. Check the exact wording of your policy first. Check the deadline at the same time: at several Irish institutions it is three working days, and at least one refuses retrospective applications outright.
A student certificate is not a special product. It is the same private medical certificate an Irish GP issues for any absence — which is exactly what most extenuating-circumstances policies ask for.
A private certificate from a doctor on the Irish Medical Council register, carrying your name and date of birth, the dates and duration of the absence, the date of issue, the doctor’s name, qualification and Medical Council registration number, the practice’s name, address and contact details, and a unique certificate number. That is the format the extenuating-circumstances processes below describe when they ask for evidence from a registered medical practitioner.
Each certificate carries a QR code that opens a verification page confirming the document was issued by us and is still valid. Seeing the fuller detail requires entering your date of birth, so a certificate handed to a faculty office does not expose your medical information to everyone who handles it.
A written record of what was discussed, the assessment and the plan. Some processes ask for more than a bare certificate, and a summary gives the committee something substantive without you having to write your own account of it.
Deadlines in these processes are often counted in working days from the assessment you missed. Being seen the same evening rather than in ten days’ time is frequently the difference between a valid application and a late one.
Each of these is a real requirement we found published by a real Irish institution, or a real clinical limit of a remote consultation. If one of them applies to you, do not book.
This is the big one. TU Dublin’s Extenuating Circumstances Form must be accompanied by a TU Dublin Professional Opinion Form, completed by the professional. University of Galway runs exam deferrals on its own deferral form. Some departments issue a bespoke medical form of their own. We issue our certificate as a signed PDF and nothing else — there is no third-party-form-completion service here. If your institution requires its own form filled in and signed by a doctor, you need a doctor who will do that, and you should ask before you book anything.
A doctor can record the date you say your symptoms began and can in some circumstances certify a period that has already started, but no doctor is going to certify a fortnight of incapacity they had no clinical basis to assess. If you have already missed the exam, say so at the start of the consultation and be specific about dates. What the GP can honestly cover is their call, not ours, and the fee is for the consultation either way.
Where a policy names a particular provider — a campus student health service, an occupational health provider, a named consultant — a certificate from us does not substitute for it. Read the wording of your own institution’s policy before you book. If it names someone, go to them.
A medical certificate is evidence submitted to a process. The decision belongs to your institution’s extenuating circumstances committee, assessment board or exam board, and they apply their own regulations to it. Nobody outside that process — including us — can tell you the outcome in advance.
No listening to a chest, no examining an abdomen or an eardrum, no bloods, no swabs. Where an examination is what the situation needs, the GP will say so and direct you to in-person care. That is a clinical limit, not a policy one.
Bereavement, a family crisis, a Garda report, a landlord dispute: these are recognised grounds in most extenuating-circumstances policies, but the evidence comes from the relevant professional or body, not from a GP consultation about your own health.
Ireland has more than twenty publicly funded higher education institutions and each sets its own regulations. These five publish theirs clearly enough to quote. Yours may differ — and within a single university, departments often do.
Each statement above was read off the institution's own published page, linked beneath it, and is accurate as of August 2026. Regulations, forms and deadlines are set by those institutions and change every academic year — several publish new cut-off dates each semester. Confirm on the official page before you rely on anything here, and where your students' union runs a welfare service, they will know the current position better than any third-party page.
It is one attachment to an application that you still have to make, on your institution’s system, by its deadline, per module or per examination. Getting the certificate and doing nothing else is the commonest way this goes wrong.
Three working days after the last exam. One week before the assessment. A fixed calendar cut-off at 4pm. These are real published deadlines at Irish institutions and they are short. Find yours on the day you fall ill, not on the day you feel well enough to deal with it.
They do not, and departments within one university can differ. The five below are a sample chosen because their rules are published and specific — not a directory. Your own institution’s current regulations are the only ones that decide your case.
Every Irish higher education institution has a students' union with a welfare officer whose job is exactly this: they know the current deadline, they know which form your department wants, and they can tell you whether a late application has any prospect. If you are registered with a campus health service, check what it charges before you pay for a private consultation — for many students it is free or heavily subsidised.
A certificate is handed to people who are not entitled to your medical history — a programme office, an exam board, an administrator — so it is written accordingly.
€35
Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm
€50
Evenings, weekends and bank holidays
One fee for the consultation, with the price for your chosen time shown before you pay. There is no separate charge for a certificate and there is no student rate. The fee is for the consultation and the doctor's judgement, so it is payable whether or not the GP concludes a certificate is appropriate. See full pricing.
See an Irish Medical Council registered GP by video, seven days a week including evenings and weekends. From €35, with the price for your chosen time shown before you pay. Check your institution's form and deadline first.
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