A college course asks for proof of your MMR. A new job in a hospital wants your hepatitis B doses. A travel clinic wants to know what you have already had. Your child’s new school abroad asks for a full vaccination history.
In some countries you would log in to one national register and download a statement. Ireland does not work like that yet. Your vaccination history is held in several places, depending on when and where each vaccine was given, and getting all of it usually means asking more than one of them.
This guide covers where each part lives and how to ask for it. It was checked against HSE, Data Protection Commission and government sources in November 2026. It is general information, not medical advice.
Disclosure
I am a doctor, and I founded exora, a personal health record app. It appears once, near the end, and I am explicit there about what it does not do. Everything before that works whatever you use.
The short version
- Flu and COVID-19 vaccines: the HSE Health App shows them, if you are 16 or over and have a verified MyGovID.
- Childhood vaccines: ask the GP practice that gave them, and the HSE Local Immunisation Office for the area where you grew up.
- School vaccines: ask the Local Immunisation Office for the area where you went to school.
- Everything a provider holds about you: make a data access request. It is free, and they must reply within one month.
- Newer babies are the exception. Since late 2025, childhood vaccines given by GPs flow into a national system, so records for children born from October 2025 should be the most complete.
Why your record is in pieces
In Ireland, vaccines are given by different people at different stages of life, and each kept its own records.
- Babies and toddlers get their vaccines from the GP practice, at visits at 2, 4, 6, 12 and 13 months (HSE: vaccines for your child).
- Junior infants and first-year secondary students are offered vaccines in school (HSE: school vaccination programme). For junior infants, the HSE says “In most places, a doctor or nurse will give these vaccines at your child’s school”, and in Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal your GP practice gives them instead (HSE).
- Adults get flu, COVID-19, pneumococcal, travel and work vaccines from GPs, pharmacies, HSE clinics, hospitals, occupational health and private travel clinics.
For years, GPs recorded childhood vaccines on their own systems and sent paper returns to the Local Health or Immunisation Office. School teams kept their own records. Nothing joined them up for you.
What is changing: the National Immunisation Information System
The HSE is now building a single system, the National Immunisation Information System (NIIS). In a November 2025 letter to GPs, the HSE said that from 27 November 2025, childhood vaccine records entered into a GP practice’s system “will automatically transfer to NIIS, reducing the need for paper-based vaccination returns” (HSE circular NCO-26-2025). NIIS is built on the platform GPs already use to record COVID-19, flu and pneumococcal vaccines.
Two caveats from the same letter matter if you are looking for a record:
- It is most complete for the youngest children. The HSE says the history “will be complete for all children born on or after 1st October 2025”, but that it may take some time before complete records are available for children born before that date.
- It is a system for clinicians, not a portal for you. GPs can look up a child’s vaccines given at another practice through a Vaccination History Search on the HSE’s provider portal. I could not find any way for a parent or adult to view their NIIS record directly, outside the flu and COVID-19 records in the HSE app.
I also could not confirm from HSE sources whether school vaccines are now recorded in NIIS. Until that is clear, treat school vaccines as held locally.
Where to look, one source at a time
1. The HSE Health App
The HSE says that once you log in to the app you can see “your COVID-19 and flu vaccine records”, including when you last had a flu vaccine or a COVID-19 vaccine or booster. “You must be age 16 or older to use the HSE Health App”, and to log in “you need a verified MyGovID” (HSE: about your HSE Health App).
It does not show your childhood or school vaccines, and the HSE’s page does not mention viewing a child’s records. Our comparison of the HSE app and a personal health record app covers what else it holds.
If you are looking for the COVID-19 certificate you used for travel in 2021 and 2022, gov.ie says it is no longer needed for travel in the EU. The vaccines themselves are still on your record, and the app is the quickest place to see them.
2. Your GP practice
For most people this is the richest single source. Your GP holds the vaccines given at the practice, and often letters or notes about vaccines given elsewhere. If you have moved practice, your records may have moved with you, but older entries can be incomplete. If you are looking for childhood vaccines, the practice you attended as a child is worth asking, even if you left it long ago.
You can simply ask for a printout of your vaccination history. If you want a copy of everything, see the data access request below.
3. The Local Immunisation Office
The HSE has a Local Immunisation Office for each county or area. Its contact page (last reviewed March 2026) says these offices can help with vaccination records and certificates, school vaccination programmes and general immunisation queries. Two practical points:
- Ask the right county. “Local Immunisation Offices can only help with queries for their own county or area.” For childhood vaccines, that is the area you lived in as a child. For school vaccines, it is where you went to school.
- Some areas split the work. In some counties, such as Cork, there are separate contacts for primary childhood vaccination certificates and school vaccination certificates.
Expect to be asked for details that identify you and the record, such as your date of birth and the addresses and school you had at the time. Older records may be patchy, so if the office cannot find something, the GP practice you attended as a child is the next place to ask.
4. The paper you were given
Look in the drawer. The HSE’s My Child books are given to every new parent, and the 0 to 2 years book says your public health nurse will give you information about your child’s immunisation passport on their first home visit. Many families also have a school consent form, a pharmacy card or a travel clinic certificate. A photo of each is worth more than you might think.
5. A data access request
Under the GDPR you have the right to a copy of the personal information an organisation holds about you, including your health records. The Data Protection Commission says you can request your data “free of charge”, and that the organisation must respond “at the latest within one month”, extendable by two further months for complex or numerous requests if it tells you within the first month (DPC: access and portability). A fee is allowed only in narrow cases, such as extra copies.
You can send one to your GP, to the HSE (which covers its immunisation offices and school teams), to a pharmacy or to a private clinic. For the HSE and public hospitals, a Freedom of Information request is another route. Our Ireland records guide walks through both, with the deadlines and what to do if you are refused.
Getting your child’s records
The same sources apply: your GP practice, the Local Immunisation Office and the immunisation passport or My Child book. For a child under 16, the HSE app will not help, because you must be 16 to use it.
A parent or guardian can usually make a data access or FOI request on a child’s behalf. With teenagers it is more nuanced, because Irish law does not set a single age at which a child takes over their own records. My guide to managing family health records in Ireland covers who can see what. For the checks and books that go with a young child’s vaccines, see child health checks and records in Ireland.
If your child has missed a vaccine, the HSE says “you can still catch up on most vaccines if you miss them”, and your GP surgery can book or rearrange an appointment (HSE). Whether a missed dose is needed is a question for your GP or public health nurse, not for this article.
Vaccines you had in another country
Vaccines given abroad will not appear in any Irish system on their own. Bring whatever you have, such as a vaccination booklet, a certificate or a printout, to your GP, who can record them and advise on anything missing.
If the documents are in another language, a GP may be able to read the vaccine names and dates without a formal translation. If an official body needs one, our guide to getting medical records translated in Ireland explains when it must be certified.
Going the other way, if you are leaving Ireland or travelling, pull your history together before you go, because asking several offices from abroad is slower. My guide to travelling abroad with a medical condition covers the travel clinic appointment.
Where exora fits, and where it does not
The problem with an Irish vaccination history is that it is in pieces: a screenshot from the HSE app, a GP printout, a letter from an immunisation office, a page of the My Child book, a card from a pharmacy, a booklet from another country. exora is a personal health record app, and it puts those pieces in one place. exora is free to start, with an optional membership.
You upload what you have, such as PDFs, photos or scans, and exora reads them for you, with a reading system built for medical records. Each vaccine is read into one record with its dates, linked back to the page it came from. Vaccines a document lists as due are kept as due, not given. Each child can have their own profile, with their own record. There is more on the immunisation records feature page.
Where it does not help, plainly:
- It does not follow the Irish schedule. exora can compare a record with the national schedules of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US and the UK. Ireland’s is not one of them, so it will not tell you what is due or overdue under the HSE schedule. Your GP or public health nurse will.
- It is not your official record. A vaccine missing from your GP’s or the HSE’s records still needs them to fix it at the source.
- It can misread. The reading is automated, so check anything that matters against the original. That is why every vaccine links back to it.
- No HSE connection. exora has no link to the HSE Health App, NIIS, your GP’s system or any HSE service, and no Irish health-data certification. It works only from the documents you add.
- Your data is stored in Sydney, Australia, outside the EU. How we handle it is on our security page; read it before you upload anything.
- It is not medical advice. It organises your information. It does not tell you which vaccines you or your child need.
The short version, again
Ireland has no single place that shows every vaccine you have had. Flu and COVID-19 vaccines are in the HSE Health App for anyone 16 or over with a verified MyGovID. Childhood vaccines are with the GP practice that gave them and the Local Immunisation Office for the area, and school vaccines with the office for the area of your school. Babies born from October 2025 have the most complete national record, but it is not one you can open yourself. When in doubt, make a data access request: it is free, and the answer is due within one month.
Sources
- HSE circular NCO-26-2025: recording of primary childhood immunisations (NIIS from 27 November 2025, completeness, Vaccination History Search)
- HSE: about your HSE Health App (flu and COVID-19 records, age 16, MyGovID)
- HSE: Local Immunisation Office contact details by county (records and certificates, own area only)
- HSE: vaccines for your child (visit ages, junior infant vaccines, catch-up)
- HSE: school vaccination programme
- HSE: My Pregnancy and My Child books
- gov.ie: COVID Tracker app (vaccination certificate no longer needed for EU travel)
- Data Protection Commission: access and portability (free, one month)
- GDPR, Articles 12 and 15 (right of access)
Claims about HSE services, NIIS and data access are sourced to hse.ie, gov.ie and dataprotection.ie, linked inline, and were checked on 9 November 2026. The HSE is changing how vaccines are recorded, so parts of this page will date; it will be updated as they do. This article is general information, not medical or legal advice. How exora handles your information is in our privacy policy.
