Ireland: Corporate and Company Law

This legislative update examines Ireland's Autumn 2026 legislative agenda, including reforms to director address disclosure and cooperative societies law, while analyzing key governance trends from the UK proxy season and the European Commission's corporate law harmonization priorities. The analysis explores shareholder activism, board diversity expectations, and the EU's ambitious "EU Inc." framework aimed at creating unified company law across Member States.

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Ireland has introduced significant amendments to its beneficial ownership registers in 2026, implementing the Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD6) framework. These reforms fundamentally restructure access rights to the Central Register of Beneficial Ownership of Trusts and Corporate Entities, moving away from unrestricted public access toward a tiered system that balances transparency with privacy rights while maintaining accessibility for legitimate anti-money laundering purposes.

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The European Commission has proposed a voluntary EU-wide corporate framework, commonly known as "EU Inc.", designed to allow companies to operate across Europe under a single set of rules with a digital-by-default approach.

Ireland's EU Council Presidency from July to December 2026 brings an ambitious financial services agenda centered on European competitiveness.

On 5 May 2026, the Central Bank of Ireland (the “Central Bank“) published an updated AIF Rulebook, together with its Feedback Statement on Consultation Paper 162...

Revenue confirmed on 10 February 2026 that companies who deal with Revenue’s Large Cases Division and have an establishment in Ireland will be considered within scope for Phase One of Ireland’s VAT Modernisation programme. Therefore they will be subject to the first phase of implementation for mandatory eInvoicing and real-time reporting for domestic transactions from 1 November 2028.

Regulations introduced in 2025 impose new board gender balance obligations on many Irish companies listed on certain EU markets, with gender balance targets for both executive directors and non-executive directors (“NEDs”) to be achieved by 30 June 2026.