How the Common Travel Area affects Irish and UK students studying in each other's countries

What the Common Travel Area is

The Common Travel Area (CTA) is a bilateral arrangement between Ireland and the United Kingdom that predates both countries' EU membership, dating back to the 1920s. It lets Irish and British citizens live, work, and study in each other's country without a visa or residence permit. Brexit changed the rules for every other EU nationality moving to the UK, but the CTA sits outside EU law entirely, so it kept working after the UK left the EU.

A 2019 memorandum of understanding between the two governments confirmed this arrangement in writing. According to the House of Commons Library , the memorandum states the CTA gives Irish and British citizens the right of access to all levels of education and training, and associated student support, in each other's country on terms no less favourable than those for citizens of that country.

The CTA also covers the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man alongside Ireland and the UK, though most student mobility in practice runs between Ireland and Great Britain or Northern Ireland. Unlike EU free movement, the CTA is not written into a single treaty that any court outside the two countries enforces, it works because both governments choose to keep honouring it, which is also why the 2019 memorandum mattered: it put the commitment on record in the middle of the Brexit process.

Studying in the UK as an Irish citizen

Irish citizens do not need a visa to study in the UK. You are treated as automatically settled, so you skip the immigration permission step that other international students go through. For tuition, Irish citizens qualify for home fee status, the same rate as UK students, rather than the international fee.

Eligibility for student finance, loans and grants rather than just the fee rate, usually also requires you to have lived in the UK, Ireland, the Channel Islands, or the Isle of Man for the three years before your course starts. Check your specific eligibility on GOV.UK before you apply, since fee status and finance eligibility are assessed separately. You still register with your university and, for longer stays, may need to register with the police in some circumstances, but none of this involves the Home Office immigration system that non-CTA international students go through.

Studying in Ireland as a UK citizen

The reverse applies too. UK and Northern Ireland students studying in Ireland qualify for the EU fee rate rather than the higher international fee, and remain eligible for the Free Fees Initiative , which covers tuition on many undergraduate courses at Irish public universities. You still pay the annual student contribution charge that every Free Fees student pays, set at 2,500 euros for the 2025-26 academic year.

Trinity College Dublin confirms this treatment on its fees and Brexit guidance page : UK nationality still counts toward the Free Fees Initiative nationality criteria, and UK residency still counts toward the ordinary residence requirement, exactly as it did before Brexit. You do not need an Irish immigration permission or visa to enrol, and you do not need to register with the Irish immigration authorities the way a non-EEA international student does.

Why this differs from every other EU nationality

Every other EU citizen moving to the UK now applies through the same immigration system as non-EU applicants, most commonly a Student visa, or relies on status secured earlier through the EU Settlement Scheme if they were already living in the UK before the end of 2020. The CTA is not an EU right. It is a standalone treaty relationship that has nothing to do with either country's EU membership, which is why it kept functioning after one half of the pair left the EU and the other stayed. A German or Polish student moving to the UK today needs a visa and pays the international fee rate. An Irish student does neither. The same asymmetry runs the other way into Ireland: a French or Italian student studying there today enters on EU free movement rules like any other EU citizen, while a UK student enters through the CTA instead, arriving at a similar practical result through a different legal route.

CTA compared with the EU Settlement Scheme

Before you apply

• Confirm your citizenship, CTA rights depend on holding Irish or British citizenship, not just residence in either country.

• Check the university's fee-status page directly, some ask you to submit a fee status questionnaire even when CTA applies.

• If you also plan to apply for student finance, check the separate three-year residency requirement early, it is stricter than the fee status test.

• Keep proof of citizenship, your passport, ready for enrolment, since you will not have a visa or residence permit to show instead.