In September 2011 EHFA recognised a new national register of exercise professionals in Ireland. The register joined the EREPS programme, and the association announced the recognition on 26 September.
Recognition was the mechanism by which a European register reached individual instructors. Rather than enrolling and verifying every professional itself, EREPS worked with the bodies that held the records in each country and could vouch for the training behind them. A register that joined the programme had to be able to show that its entry requirements and its procedures matched the European standards; criteria for registers sat alongside the criteria for training programmes in the accreditation framework, and the Standards Council held both. A register entry is also the only part of a qualification that a stranger can verify, which is what made it worth keeping the national record and the European one in step. In return, a member of that register held a qualification that carried meaning beyond the country that issued it.
Ireland had contributed to the technical work before it had a register inside the programme. The National Certificate in Exercise and Fitness at the University of Limerick was represented on the Technical Experts Group that reviewed the level 3 and level 4 standards, so the country's training practice had fed into the framework already. See EREPS and the Technical Experts Group.