Sick cert online for your employer

What a sick cert actually confirms

A sick cert confirms two things only: that a doctor has assessed the person named on it, and that the person is unfit for work for a stated period. It does not tell the employer your diagnosis, and in Ireland an employer has no right to be told one. A note usually carries the patient name and date of birth, the dates covered, the date it was written, and the name, qualification, work address and signature of the doctor who wrote it.

That narrow scope is the point. Payroll and HR need a documented reason to treat the absence as certified sick leave rather than unexplained absence, and the cert supplies exactly that. Anything beyond it, such as a fitness-to-return assessment, workplace restrictions or an occupational health report, is a separate document with a separate process behind it. If your employer asks for detail that goes past unfit or fit for work, that request belongs with occupational health rather than with a sick cert.

From which day employers ask for a cert

Most Irish employers ask for a cert from the third day of absence, but this is a contract rule rather than a single national rule, so the honest answer sits in your own contract or staff handbook. Some employers accept self-certification for the first two days, some ask for a note from day one, and some ask for one only where the absence crosses a pay period.

Statutory sick pay is a separate layer again. The Sick Leave Act 2022 introduced a statutory entitlement to paid sick leave in Ireland, and the number of paid days is set by regulation and has been changed since the Act commenced, so check the current figure with Citizens Information rather than relying on a number you read on a health page. What matters for the paperwork is that statutory sick pay is certified: the employer is entitled to a medical certificate for the days claimed, which is why the note is worth arranging on the day the absence starts rather than at the end of the week.

What MEDINOW does and does not cover on this page

MEDINOW does not issue sick certificates for employers. This page is written as information about how the Irish system works, and there is nothing to buy on it. We say that plainly because a page that ranks for sick certs and then quietly sells something else wastes your time.

MEDINOW works from a written medical questionnaire that a doctor reads and answers in his own time. There is no video consultation, no phone appointment and no live chat. The two services we do run are a repeat prescription assessment for treatment you are already on, at 19.90 euro, and a weight management assessment at 29.90 euro. The fee covers the medical assessment itself, not the issuing of a document. If the doctor declines on medical grounds, the fee is refunded. If you do not send the documentation the doctor asks for, the assessment counts as carried out and the fee is not refunded.

If your absence is caused by a long-term condition and the practical problem is that your regular medicine is running out while you are off work, the repeat prescription route is the relevant one rather than a cert. If what you need is the note for HR, an Irish GP practice, an out-of-hours service or an Irish online doctor service is where that comes from.

Why a sick cert is not a Certificate of Incapacity for Work

These are two different documents, and mixing them up is the most expensive mistake on this topic. A sick cert goes to your employer. A Certificate of Incapacity for Work is the form that supports a claim for Illness Benefit from the Department of Social Protection, and it comes from a doctor on the Irish Medical Council register who has examined you in person and who submits the certificate through the state channel.

No document written by a doctor outside that register and that channel will support an Illness Benefit claim, however correct it is medically. If you are out of work long enough that state payment matters, book with an Irish GP and ask specifically for the Illness Benefit certificate, because the GP has to submit it rather than hand it to you. Employers, by contrast, are usually asking only for evidence of a medical assessment, which is a much lower bar and a different piece of paper.

How a certificate from an EU-registered doctor is treated

For an employer, a certificate written by a doctor registered in another EU or EEA state carries the same evidential value as an Irish one, because what the employer is being shown is that a qualified doctor assessed the employee. Under Directive 2011/24/EU a doctor providing a service from another member state is regulated by that state, and a properly written certificate identifies the doctor, the qualification, the work address including the country and a contact with an international dialling code, so an employer who wants to verify it can.

Two limits sit on top of that. First, an employer or a collective agreement can set its own requirements about who may certify absence, and some larger employers insist on a named practice or on occupational health. Second, none of this touches state payments, which run on the Irish certificate described in the previous section. If in doubt, ask HR what they accept before the absence rather than after it.

Can a sick cert be backdated

As a rule it cannot, and any service offering to date a note before the day you were assessed is doing something a doctor should not do. A certificate records an assessment, so the date on it is the date the doctor formed the opinion. A doctor can describe a period of illness that began earlier where the history supports it, which is a different thing from pretending the assessment happened earlier.

Practically, this means the cert is worth arranging on the first day you know the absence will run on, not on the day you return. If you were genuinely too unwell to arrange anything for several days, say so to whoever assesses you and to your employer, because most sick leave policies have a line for exactly that situation. Employers deal with late certificates constantly; what they will not accept is a date that does not match the rest of the story.

When an absence needs urgent assessment rather than a note

Paperwork is never the priority when symptoms are severe. Chest pain, breathlessness at rest, one-sided weakness, difficulty speaking, a first seizure, severe abdominal pain, a rash that does not fade under pressure, or confusion in someone who is unwell all need urgent assessment: ring 112 or 999, or go to the nearest Emergency Department.

Thoughts of harming yourself are also an emergency, and Samaritans can be reached free on 116 123 at any hour. Less dramatic but still urgent problems, such as a fever that will not settle, a wound with spreading redness or a chest infection getting worse over days, belong with your GP or with the out-of-hours GP service rather than with a website. The certificate can be sorted out once you have been seen; it is the one part of this that keeps.

Who wrote this page

This page was written by the MEDINOW editorial team and reviewed by lek. Damian Wojno, a doctor registered in Poland, PWZ no. 3211301. He is not on the Irish Medical Council register and does not hold an Irish practice address, which is why this page is careful to say which Irish routes sit outside our service. Reviewed on 29 August 2026.

The page is general health information about how prescribing and documentation work in Ireland. It is not a diagnosis and it does not replace an assessment by your own GP. If something about your own situation does not match what you read here, your GP and your employer's HR policy know the specifics and this page does not.

How this page was put together: the medicines, categories and rules described here were checked against the sources listed below rather than written from memory, and any figure we could not verify at source was left out instead of estimated. Where Irish practice differs from the rules of another country, the Irish position is the one stated on this page, and the Irish regulators named here are the HPRA for medicines, the HSE for health services, the PSI for pharmacy and the Irish Medical Council for doctors practising in Ireland. Corrections are welcome by email and are made to the page rather than argued about.