Contemporary education policies globally emphasise the importance of developing primary-level pre-service teacher (PST) digital competence. While authentic school placement is widely seen as the ideal space to develop these skills, the reported lived experiences of PSTs reveal an uneven reality. Grounded in Starkey’s digital competence framework and utilising a Critical Realist Approach to Thematic Analysis, this study investigates the qualitative, self-reported placement experiences of final-year primary PSTs in Ireland. The findings indicate that while successful perceived experiences using digital technology in classrooms are associated with digital competence growth, school placement environments were reported to often fail to provide the stable conditions necessary for pedagogical experimentation. Specifically, participants narrated that digital competence development is frequently hindered by inconsistent school resources, unaligned expectations within the school placement triad (PST, cooperating teacher and placement tutor) and the performative pressures of graded assessment rubrics. By providing causal explanations for these perceived outcomes, this paper moves beyond describing technology use. It offers actionable insights for international teacher educators and policymakers, arguing for the co-construction of a shared digital pedagogy vision across initial teacher education programmes to close the gap between policy rhetoric and classroom reality.