The Higher Education Language Educator Competences (HELECs) Framework has been developed by an inter-institutional team of language teachers and applied linguists in Ireland. The project was funded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and supported by the four partner institutions, University College Cork (lead), Dublin City University, Maynooth University and Waterford Institute of Technology. The aims of the HELECs framework are: • To work toward the goals of the national languages strategy, Languages Connect: Ireland’s Strategy for Foreign Languages in Education (2017), with particular reference to increasing capacity and enhancing the learning environment. • To provide a tool for language educators and their managers with which they can self-assess and articulate their competences. • To work toward a professionalisation of the field of language teaching and learning in higher education in Ireland. In the following sections we outline our target audience for this framework, describe the development process, and provide the details of the framework including the competence identifiers, the competence domains and the competence descriptors.