HEAR and DARE: The Access Routes Forums Get Wrong
Search any Leaving Cert forum for HEAR or DARE and you will find confident numbers. "You get 10% off the points." "DARE knocks 70 points off." Both claims circulate each year, and neither appears anywhere in the official scheme documents. The 2026 CAO application opened in November, and the access deadlines arrive before most students have thought about them, so this is the moment to replace the rumours with the rules.
The rumour versus the mechanism
HEAR and DARE do not apply a discount formula to your points. Each participating college reserves a quota of places on its courses for eligible applicants. Those places go to eligible candidates who scored below the published cut-off, provided they meet the minimum entry requirements and subject requirements for the course. The gap between the cut-off and the lowest admitted access applicant varies by course, by college and by year, because it depends on how many eligible people applied and how the quota was filled. No college publishes it as a fixed number in advance.
That has a practical consequence. Treat HEAR or DARE as a second chance at the courses you want, and build your points plan as if the schemes did not exist. Run your subjects through the points calculator and check the cut-off history for your target courses on the course search. The schemes widen the door; they do not remove it.
Who the schemes are for
HEAR (Higher Education Access Route) is for school leavers from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Eligibility combines household income with indicators such as medical card status, social welfare payments in the household, parental education and attendance at a DEIS school. You need to meet the income test plus a set combination of the other indicators. The full matrix is on accesscollege.ie.
DARE (Disability Access Route to Education) is for school leavers whose disability has had a significant negative impact on their second-level education. Eligibility rests on evidence of the disability plus an Educational Impact Statement completed with your school. The list of qualifying conditions and required evidence sits in the DARE handbook on the same site.
You can apply to both schemes in the same year if your circumstances fit both. Eligibility for one has no bearing on the other.
The deadlines that catch people
You apply through your CAO application. There is no separate portal. Tick the relevant box, complete the supplementary sections online, then post the paper evidence to the CAO in Galway. For 2026 entry the published dates are:
| Step | Deadline |
|---|---|
| CAO application submitted | 1 February 2026, 5pm |
| Online HEAR/DARE sections completed | 1 March 2026, 5pm |
| Supporting documents posted to CAO | 10 March 2026, 5pm |
Confirm these on accesscollege.ie before you rely on them. The evidence stage is where applications fail. Income documents, consultant reports and school statements take weeks to gather, and the CAO accepts them by post, with no extensions for late paperwork. Start requesting documents in December or January, not the week before the deadline.
Cost and downside
Applying to HEAR or DARE adds nothing to the standard CAO fee. An unsuccessful access application has no effect on your ordinary application, which competes on points as normal. The realistic downside is a few hours of form-filling and some phone calls to gather evidence. Against the upside of a reserved-quota place, that trade is hard to argue with.
What to do this month
- Read the eligibility criteria on accesscollege.ie and decide, with a parent or guardian, whether the indicators fit your household.
- List the documents you will need and request the slow ones now: income statements, medical reports, school letters.
- Build your course list on points alone. Check how your targets have moved using the trends tool, and read our guide to ordering your list before you lock anything in.
Apply if you might qualify. The schemes exist for the people forums keep misinforming, and the deadline structure rewards the families who start in December.