Ireland: Court Procedure

International Arbitration Comparative Guide for the jurisdiction of Ireland, check out our comparative guides section to compare across multiple countries

The Department of Justice recently issued its Justice Plan 2024, which commits to making significant progress towards amending Ireland's defamation laws in 2024

A Dawn Raid is an unannounced inspection by a regulatory authority, aimed at investigating suspected breaches of the law.

Two electricity producers successfully challenged decisions to exclude them from the Capacity Market auction scheduled in November 2024, in the cases of Kilshane Energy Ltd and Coolpowra BESS Ltd (the "applicants") v EirGrid plc and Commission for Regulation of Utilities ("CRU") (the "respondents") [2025] IEHC 174.

NEC contracts are widely used internationally and have become more common in Ireland in recent years in the utilities and infrastructure sectors.

On 21 March 2025, the European Commission published a study on Mapping Third Party Litigation Funding in the European Union (PDF, 6.3MB) (the "Study"). 

The High Court has once again expressed its frustration with "quack lawyers" advising lay litigants to bring nonsensical, unmeritorious applications before the Court.

On 31 January 2025, a new statutory instrument came into force providing for significant changes to the Rules of the Superior Courts ("RSC").

On 5 December 2024, the Irish Court of Appeal referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU") a question about site-specific conservation objectives...

Under Order 19, Rule 28 of the Rules of the Superior Courts, the courts have jurisdiction, among other things, to strike out proceedings where the plaintiff has no reasonable cause of action.

Under Irish law, as a general rule, costs typically follow the event such that the winning party recovers its party and party costs from the unsuccessful party.

In the latest of a series of judgments relating to actions taken by the Director of Corporate Enforcement (the Director) against former National Irish Bank (NIB) directors, in December 2011, the Supreme Court overturned a High Court decision to impose a nine-year disqualification order on Mr Barry Seymour, Executive Director of NIB from April 1994 to July 1996.