What does it cost to start a private practice in Ireland (2026)?

There's no single reliable figure for "what it costs to start a private practice" — it depends mostly on the room you choose and varies a lot between counties. Here's each real line item, who sets its cost, and where you actually have room to start lean.

1. Registering with Revenue

Registering as a self-employed sole trader for income tax with Revenue is free. If you set up a limited company instead, there's a registration fee with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) — check the current fee on cro.ie before budgeting. See our full comparison in sole trader or limited company?

2. Professional body membership: optional, not a licence

Statutory regulation of the title "psychologist" through CORU is coming, with registers currently expected to open from 2027 — see our CORU registration guide for the detail. Until then, membership of a body such as the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI) is voluntary: it brings accreditation and a referral network, at a fee the body sets itself. It's not a legal precondition for seeing private clients today.

3. Professional indemnity insurance

Not a legal requirement in the same way registration is, but it's the protection most practitioners treat as non-negotiable in practice: it covers claims arising from clinical work. Cost varies by cover level and insurer — get quotes from more than one before committing.

4. Room: the most variable line item

• Room hired by the hour — increasingly common for people starting out; it keeps your fixed costs low while you build your caseload.
• Your own rented room — more control and a consistent space, but the monthly rent becomes your biggest fixed cost, and it varies enormously between Dublin and other counties.
• Fully online — no room cost at all, via our telehealth guide, though some clients still prefer meeting in person for a first session.

Don't go looking for "the average room rate in Ireland" — the gap between Dublin and other counties is too wide for a single national figure to be useful. Compare shared-room and rental listings directly in your own area before committing to anything fixed.

5. Practice management software

Scheduling, notes, reminders and invoicing can all run on a spreadsheet for the first few months, but the time lost to manual admin grows fast past a handful of clients. Starting on a free plan avoids pulling that cost forward before you have recurring income.

How to sequence spending in your first months

Common budgeting mistakes

• Committing to a fixed rent before you have a realistic sense of your booked hours.
• Treating professional body membership as a legal requirement rather than an accreditation choice.
• Accepting a generic "cost to start" figure found online instead of adding up your own real line items.
• Pulling software spend forward before your first client, when a free plan exists to start on.