In February, Trinity students voted overwhelmingly in favour of modular billing, a system that lets students who fail a module pay for and retake only that module, while remaining a registered student.
Under Trinity’s current system, students who fail their repeat assessments and need to repeat modules have two options — pay the full fees for an entire year and repeat it, including modules they have already passed, or go “off books with assessment” (OBA). OBA costs €382 and is currently permitted for up to 20 credits or three modules. Students on OBA are not registered with the College, cannot attend classes and cannot fully access student services while waiting to repeat their failed modules.
According to Eve Martin, the current Trinity College Dublin Student Union (TCDSU/AMLCT) Education Officer, modular repeats would offer an alternative by allowing students to repeat failed modules while remaining registered at the College. In an email to the University Times, Martin explained that, under the current proposal, students could repeat up to an initial limit of 30 credits, attending classes and paying to repeat only the modules they had failed.
This would mean students could remain registered and involved in College life, without having to pay full year fees, or go off books. The proposed 30-credit module limit would be reviewed after the first year of implementation, and students would retain the option of going off books if they preferred.
However, the current proposal would not allow students to carry failed modules into the following academic year while progressing with their degree. They would still have to complete their repeats before progressing, meaning the policy would reduce the financial burden of repeating a year without reducing the time it takes to finish a degree.
The policy has since been approved by the College, but is not yet in effect. According to Martin, “Modular Repeats have been approved ‘in principle’ by the Undergraduate Studies Committee and University Council, and currently we are awaiting the results of attempts to secure financing for the necessary updates to the College IT systems”, adding that, if funding is allocated, it could “hopefully be in place by the next academic year.”
Until then, the existing policies are still in place. The stakes are high for any student facing a repeat year or going off books. Mia Guiffre, a third-year Law and Political Science student, also specifically mentioned international students.
“I think, especially for international students, having to take an unwanted gap year is really inconsiderate”, she says. “Especially with all the additional costs the student has to foot, for example, rent, flights, off-books fees, etc.”
Former Education Officer, Buster Whaley, the main force behind the 2026 modular repeats campaign, also directly discussed what is at risk for international students. Explaining that a student who goes off books is no longer a full-time student. “They’d have to leave the country effectively”, he says, “because they wouldn’t be able to renew their visa or their permit”. For a student from outside of Ireland, failing a single module could mean losing the right to stay in the country.
Importantly, Trinity has been debating the idea of modular billing for many years. In 2018, the College was considering the proposal, but it was tied to a separate policy adding charges for a student’s first repeat of an exam. This meant that students who failed a December or April exam would have to pay to resit it in August, even on their first repeat attempt. On January 23rd, 2018, the College announced its intention to introduce fees for supplemental examinations (repeats) at €200 per exam, capped at €1,000. The argument was that a new billing system had to be paid for somehow, and repeat fees were the only feasible answer at the time. However, modular billing and first-round exam resit fees are two separate issues, and introducing one does not necessitate introducing the other.
Students were given a chance to respond through a referendum. Of 3,504 valid votes, 82 per cent voted strongly against. The College Board went ahead anyway, settling on a flat fee of €450 per module repeat.
The backlash was extensive, with 40 students gathering in the dining hall in protest. The “Take back Trinity” campaign launched, and protests commenced throughout campus. Under that pressure, the College Board voted to scrap the repeat exam fees on March 28th, 2018, following suggestions from the Provost, the Students’ Union and the Graduate Students’ Union.
The Union asked the College to defer modular billing until 2020/21 to allow for a full assessment of the potential sources of funding and said repeat fees should not be a preferred way to pay for the policy. Students had not rejected modular billing itself; they rejected the idea that students who fail a module should be the ones to fund its introduction. “There was student support for the policy itself ”, Whaley says, “just not the associated costs at the time”. The College had argued that it could only cover the cost through introducing fees for first-time repeat exams. The 2026 model drops these fees, but it is unclear how exactly the new system will be funded.
According to Martin, the lengthy delay also reflects the “significant logistical changes and updates to IT systems within the College” required to introduce modular billing.
The conversation was due to resume in 2020 but, “because of COVID it just kind of got shelved”, Whaley says. The idea remained unanswered, with students still facing the same two options when failing a module — repeat the year or go off books.
The circumstances have now changed, according to Martin, because the current proposal is not tied to the introduction of supplemental exam fees. “The fact that this is not the case now changes the circumstances of its implementation.”
When Whaley raised the idea again at the start of 2026, the College was “very receptive”. The timing aligned as Trinity’s own technology was also due for an overhaul. The technological overhaul associated with modular billing was one of the reasons the College was so reluctant to introduce modular billing in 2018. Billing by module requires systems that can track and charge at that level, and the College was already planning to restructure its MyTCD and SITS student systems as part of its strategic plan. “The fact that the College was already kind of anticipating making investments into IT services, it kind of lined up at the right time”, Whaley says.
He brought the motion forward to TCDSU/AMLCT Comhairle, and it subsequently went to a referendum for all students, with the vote running alongside the sabbatical elections. The overwhelming result committed the Union to lobby for modular billing and, as Whaley said, it proved to the College “that there is mass student buy-in to the concept.” The contrast with 2018 is hard to miss. In 2018, the student body protested the way modular billing was to be funded (through repeat fees). In 2026, with repeat fees out of the question, there was overwhelming support for the policy.
However, the College has only approved one half of modular billing, as it is generally two ideas. The first concerns fees — students who fail a repeat exam and have to repeat the year would only pay for the modules they failed, rather than a full year’s fees. The second concerns progression — allowing students to carry failed modules into the next academic year, while progressing with their studies. They would study the failed module on top of the next year in their degree progression. Under the new policy, Whaley says they will “pay per module rather than paying for the full year of fees”, and “they’ll also be able to remain a full-time student.” He calls it “the first kind of landmark or milestone towards full modular billing.”
It is not yet in force. “It has not been brought in yet because they haven’t upgraded the IT systems”, he says, estimating “maybe six months to a year” to make the technical changes. The part that did not pass is one he wanted most — the ability to carry failed credits between years. “Let’s say you fail a module in third year; you can bring it into fourth year. They still do not allow that.” Without it, a student must still repeat before moving on. The cost is lower, and they stay registered, but the delay remains.
Trinity would not be inventing the system either. “They do it at UCD and a handful of other Irish universities, so there is a precedent for it”, Whaley says. At UCD, a student who fails a module pays €230 to repeat that module rather than a full year, and can move up with outstanding work as long as they have not failed more than 10 credits. Maynooth University charges for repeats by credit and lets students take a module owed from a previous year. Technological University Dublin (TUD) also charges per module for repeating the year.
Whaley sees Trinity’s version as groundwork for the future of modular billing. Once billing is modular, he says, the College could “charge someone for the 10 modules they need to pass fourth year as well as an additional 11th module that is carried over from third year.” He says, “that capacity will be there in theory.”
However, modular billing would not fix every problem in the repeat system, including whether a repeat should be required at all.
Alison Power, a third-year single honours History student, retook her exams after a bereavement. She said she loves Trinity and respects everyone involved, but believes there should be “reforms or greater scope for an exceptional circumstances policy.” As far as she could find, no specific measures exist for students who have lost a parent or relative, and she asks why grief was not enough to justify a pass by compensation. This allows a student to pass a module despite narrowly failing, provided they meet certain academic criteria. Under Trinity’s regulations, this generally requires an overall pass for the year. Grief does not automatically qualify a student for a pass by compensation if the mark falls under this threshold. She passed her repeats and credits the practical support of Histhum, the History department’s email hotline. But grieving students, she says, “should not feel like they don’t matter, their grief has to be proven, or it’s not good enough to warrant a pass by compensation”. Modular billing would not change that. It alters what a repeat costs and whether a student stays registered, not whether they should have had to sit one in the first place. Ultimately, a cheaper repeat is still a repeat.
The questions now are practical. When will the systems be ready? Will the Union continue to push next for carrying modules forward? Will there ever be a fairer exceptional circumstances process? What will come next for modular billing remains uncertain. Whaley is realistic about the pace of change and acknowledges that it will come in stages.
“If we can get this at the very least, that’s something that can’t be taken back or retracted”, he says. “Everything is a long-term process; it’s at least paving the way for later issues to work on that.”
