The Story So Far
From a student-led idea in 1993 to a national Irish charity supporting third-level students across Ireland.
A service created by students, for students
NiteLine Ireland was established in 1993 by the Students’ Unions of Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. Inspired by similar student-run services and Nightlines in the UK, they aimed to set up a late-night listening service that would provide free, anonymous peer support to students over the phone.
Since then, we have expanded NiteLine’s community to twelve colleges in Dublin, Kildare, Limerick, Cork, and Louth. NiteLine now offers services to more than 175,000 third-level students across Ireland. Additionally, NiteLine trained its first cohort of UL volunteers in 2024, opening its first satellite office outside of Dublin, expanding and rebranding from NiteLine Dublin to NiteLine Ireland. Furthermore, in 2025, NiteLine Ireland merged with the preexisting NiteLine Cork, retraining previous Cork volunteers and opening NiteLine Ireland’s third satellite office.
As our call service continued to grow, the introduction of our instant messaging service in 2012 allowed NiteLine to become more accessible to students, providing an alternative option to those who may prefer instant messaging over calling. Since then, our instant messaging services have become our most popular method of being contacted by students; however, phone calls still remain an integral point of support for students who use our service.
Due to NiteLine’s growing scope, we have had to make internal changes to help cope with this while also ensuring we provide the best quality of support we can to students. Our first Board of Trustees was established in 2020, and alongside the board, NiteLine’s first strategic plan came to fruition. As a result, NiteLine became a certified national Irish charity in 2021 and has since achieved exponential growth, while improving our internal and external processes and implementing quality assurance practices.
For example, our first major national publicity campaign with Irish Rail in 2024 advertised our services to commuting students and increased public knowledge of our service. In the coming years, NiteLine Ireland hopes to continue to grow, while maintaining our focus on providing the best-quality support we can to students of our affiliated colleges across Ireland!