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Irish Copyright Licensing Agency

Further Education Licence

We help Irish colleges gain access to the teaching materials their students need. Discover how our Further Education Licence unlocks a range of compelling print and digital resources.

About the licence

The ICLA Further Education Licence provides blanket permissions to copy from millions of books, journals, magazines and newspapers published in Ireland and abroad. This means that the text and images from these works are automatically included in our repertoire, and the copyright owner has to specifically request if they wish to exclude a work from the licence.

It is fully supportive of blended (classroom and online) learning, including text and images from the internet, as well as the full complement of Irish college textbooks.

The Further Education Licence allows you to reuse content in your lectures without having to clear permissions to do so – this has already been done. It has been certified for the purpose of the legislation by the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, under Statutory Instrument No. 278 of 2020.

This means lecturers can:

  • Make print and digital copies from print and digital books, magazines, journals, newspapers and websites.
  • Make print and digital copies of text and still images from websites and other legitimate sources available on the internet.
  • Copy up to 5% OR one chapter, one article, one short story or poem from an anthology – whichever is greater – for a single course of study.
  • Copy and distribute the equivalent amount from a digital/online publication organised in a non-traditional manner.
  • Share copies with students and staff by email or via a secure virtual learning environment (VLE) no matter where the student is; students may store copies to view at a future time.
  • Use copies with digital whiteboards, VLEs and presentation software programmes.
  • Books (print and digital)
  • Journals (print and digital)
  • Magazines (print and digital)
  • Newspapers (Irish and UK – print and digital)
  • Websites and other legitimate sources available on the internet
  • Maps and charts
  • Assignment sheets
  • Printed music (including the words)
  • Some ‘Open Access’ publications
  • Copyright-free publications
  • Copy-paid publications (the price of making copies is included in the original price)
  • Any work that has been specifically excluded*

*Refer to the Excluded Works List for works which are not included in the blanket licence and therefore can be reproduced only in so far as copyright educational exceptions (which are more restrictive than the ICLA licence) allow, and otherwise only with explicit permission from the rightsholder.

Open Access

Some of the publications that a school might wish to distribute to, or copy from for, students and colleagues are made available under Open Access publishing agreements or Creative Commons licences. These can be used, depending on the agreement or licence, without reference to the ICLA licence – the authors are permitting their work to be read, copied and re-used freely, though they should always be acknowledged and their Moral Rights respected. In some instances, however, Open Access publications are ‘open’ purely for reading and not for copying so it is important to check the wording.

Data Collection

In order to distribute the licence income back to the copyright owners your school may be asked to participate in a data collection exercise. Learn more about how we collect data.