THE CAO AVAILABLE Places facility, which allows applicants to apply for CAO places that remain unfilled, opens at midday today.

Available Places are places that remain unfilled in particular courses after all offers have been made and waiting lists have been exhausted.

The facility is open to new applicants for a fee of €45. An application can be made by clicking this link.

Existing applicants can log in to the ‘My Application’ facility and select ‘Add Level 8 Available Place’ or ‘Add Level 7/6 Available Place’. There is no extra charge for existing applicants.

For Available Places, applicants should ignore previously published points in earlier offer rounds, according to the CAO.

Applicants must, however, check that they meet the normal minimum entry requirements for the course in question.

CAO / Vimeo

The CAO has noted that an Available Places application does not guarantee an offer.

“Existing applicants must be careful to remember to place their courses in genuine order of preference,” Eileen Keleghan, communications officer for CAO said.

“If an applicant still wishes to be considered to any existing courses, they must insert all Available Place courses below those they wish to retain,” she said.

“Available Place course codes may only be inserted higher on your list of preferences than any offer which you have received to date.”

Available Places can be introduced or removed by the individual institutions at any point over the coming weeks. Applicants interested in applying for an available place should do so before the places on a specific course are filled.

After Round Two offers have been issues, Available Place applicants that arrive in CAO before 11am on a Monday will be processed and considered for offers the following Thursday. This process will continue until mid-October or until all available places have been filled.

CAO Round Two offers will be available online on Wednesday 29 August at 10am and following this, a weekly schedule of offers and acceptances will continue until the last offer round on 17 October.