Issue 008 · Wednesday 11 November 2026 · Written in Dublin

Ireland has a 2027/28 date for assistants coming in, and none for the Irish students going out

The Department of Education and Youth updated its Foreign Language Assistant page on 6 October and told applicants the 2027/2028 round opens in January 2027. The English Language Assistant page, the one an Irish student uses to reach a classroom in Vienna, Berlin or Brussels, was last updated on 15 June and still fronts a round that closed at 5pm on 12 March 2026. Below the lead: what all six ELA countries actually pay, read line by line from the terms, including the three this desk left blank a fortnight ago.

The lead: two schemes, one department, one forward date between them

gov.ie runs two language assistant schemes and they point in opposite directions. The Foreign Language Assistant scheme brings French, German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese assistants into Irish schools. The English Language Assistant scheme sends Irish students the other way, into schools in Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Belgium’s Wallonia-Brussels Federation. Same department, same section, two pages.

One of those pages tells you when to come back. The other does not.

That is the inbound scheme. Now the outbound one. The English Language Assistant page carries no 2027/28 line at all. It has no opening month, no indicative window, and no sentence telling a reader that another round is coming. What it does carry, still at the top of its How to apply section, is this:

That date passed eight months ago. The page is written in the present tense around it.

There is a third signal that the outbound page is not being watched. The ELA application forms collection page is titled for 2026/27, but its underlying page description still reads “English Language Assistant Scheme application forms 2022/23” — four academic years stale, and the line a search engine or an AI answer engine is most likely to read.

We are not reporting a scheme cancellation. The ELA scheme has run for decades and nothing on gov.ie says it is ending. We are reporting that the page an Irish applicant depends on has not been given a forward date, while its sister page has, and that the gap has lasted at least from 6 October to today.

Resolved: why France’s closing date was three days later than everyone else’s

Issue 007 printed a discrepancy it could not reconcile and said so. gov.ie and the Germany terms gave 5pm on Thursday 12 March 2026 for the 2026/27 round; the France terms for the same round gave 15 March 2026. Both were read at source, and we left it unexplained rather than guess.

Reading all six country terms this morning settles it. Five of the six — Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium/Wallonia-Brussels — print the identical sentence, “by 5.00pm closing date Thursday 12th March 2026”, and send the file to ELA@education.gov.ie. France does not. The France document prints 15th March 2026, and France applications do not go to the Department at all: they go through the French Embassy in Ireland.

So it was never an error in one of the two documents. Different recipient, different deadline. A candidate who applied for France by the Department’s date was simply three days early, which cost nothing. A candidate reading only the Department’s page, and applying to France through the Embassy, had three days in hand she had no way of knowing about. That is worth printing, and it is the kind of thing that only shows up if you open all six documents rather than two.

We have put the question to the Department anyway, because a single page carrying one scheme-wide date for a scheme that has two filing routes is a page that will catch somebody eventually. If we get an answer, it goes on this page and we will say so.

Europe, second: what all six assistantships pay, from the terms themselves

Issue 007 published the pay for France, Germany and Austria and left Italy, Belgium/Wallonia-Brussels and Spain as honest blanks, because those documents had not been opened. They have now. Below is the complete board, every figure copied from the country’s own terms and conditions document on gov.ie, read on 11 November 2026.

No currency conversion has been applied and no exchange rate is quoted. Every one of these figures is published in euro by the issuing authority, so there is nothing to convert and no ECB reference rate is relevant. Where a document prints a figure as gross, it is shown as gross; where it prints net, net. We have not converted one into the other.

Spain stays where Issue 005 put it. The notice on gov.ie was re-read word for word this morning and is unchanged: “Due to continued administrative issues, it will not be possible to offer any new places on the ELA programme in Spain for the 2026-2027 academic year.” It now appears twice on the service page, once under its own heading and once beside the Spain application form. The Spain terms document itself does not mention the suspension at all, so a reader who downloads the form without reading the page around it will not learn about it from the document.

The thing the pay board does not say out loud

Read the eligibility clauses rather than the money and a different picture appears. Five of these six are student schemes, not graduate ones.

• Austria: “Undergraduates, preferably modern language undergraduates, are eligible to apply after their second year of study.”
• Germany: “Modern language undergraduates in minimum year two of study (at the time of application) are eligible to apply.”
• Italy: “Undergraduates who have completed the second year of their degree are eligible to apply.”
• France: must have completed the first year of a bachelor’s degree by the time the posting starts.
• Spain: 60 ECTS credits completed by the deadline, and enrolled in the second year.
• Belgium is the exception. Its terms accept “a diploma/bachelor’s degree” or being “in their second year of higher studies”. It is also the best paid of the six.

And every single one of the six asks for a second language, certified: German A2 for Austria, Spanish A2 for Spain, French B1 for France and Belgium, German B1 for Germany, and for Italy “a good level of Italian certified by a university tutor”.

The age bars differ more than anyone expects. Italy stops at 30. France takes 20 to 35, on arrival. Germany 18 to 35. Belgium a minimum of 21 and under 35. Austria prints no age limit. Spain is the only one of the six that takes applicants up to 60 — and Spain is the one with no Irish places.

If you already have your degree, this is the other door

None of the above is a reason not to teach in Europe. It is a reason not to spend a winter waiting on a gov.ie form that was never going to accept you. An Irish or EU passport is the single biggest advantage in European English teaching and it does not expire with your student card: you can take a job in any EU or EEA state without a visa and without an employer sponsoring you, which is the barrier that stops most of the world’s applicants.

The practical routes for a graduate are language academies and private schools hiring on their own calendars, and they are covered on our own country pages rather than on a department’s:

• EFL jobs in Europe: where Irish teachers can look first — the standing overview, hiring seasons by country.
• English teaching jobs in France: pay and the Irish route — the graduate alternative to the France assistantship above.
• Teach English in Italy from Ireland — where the €850 assistantship sits against academy pay.
• TEFL jobs in Spain — still the largest European market for Irish teachers, and open regardless of the ELA suspension.
• The Salary Index — what classroom pay looks like across our whole board, in euro.

If the acronyms themselves are the confusing part — TEFL against TESOL against CELTA, and which one a European employer actually asks for — our group reference page covers the terminology: TEFL qualifications and terminology explained.

For Transition Year coordinators

There is a version of this story for schools. A TY student is years away from an ELA application, but the thing that qualifies her for one — a second language taken seriously, plus evidence she can stand in front of a class — is built in Transition Year, not in second year of college. A TEFL qualification taken during TY is the piece most students do not have when the assistantship application comes round.

• How our online TEFL course fits into your Transition Year programme — the step-by-step for schools.
• Best Transition Year courses in Ireland — where a TEFL course sits against the other TY options.
• Transition Year TEFL course for schools and coordinators — cohort pricing and the fit planner.

Careers services and guidance counsellors can take this briefing in a form built for handing on: For careers services and guidance counsellors.

How to be ready when the 2027/28 round does open

1. Work out which doors your passport and your second language open. Italy wants an Irish passport, or Irish secondary schooling plus Irish third level. Austria and Belgium take any EU passport. Then check the language bar: A2 for Austria and Spain, B1 for France, Belgium and Germany, a tutor’s certification for Italy.
2. Check the year you will be in, not the year you are in. Most of the six want you to have finished second year by the time you take up the post. France and Spain want first year finished. If you will have graduated, Belgium is the only one of the six still open to you.
3. Get the language certification organised in this academic year, not the next one. Several of the countries require a university tutor to certify your level or complete a confidential attestation form, and tutors are hardest to reach in the weeks before a March deadline.
4. Watch both gov.ie pages, not one. The ELA service page is where a closing date would appear; the ELA application forms collection page is where the country documents are replaced. The two were last updated on the same day, 15 June 2026, and either could move first.
5. If France is your country, note that you are not filing with the Department. France applications go through the French Embassy in Ireland and its own address, and the France document carried a different closing date from the other five for the 2026/27 round.

The Hire Wire is published by The TEFL Institute of Ireland. Issue 008, 11 November 2026, by Ola Flynn. Back issues and standing desks: tefl.ie/the-hire-wire.