IRELAND Law and Practice Contributed by: Niall Esler, Shane Martin, Laura Whitson and Coleen Wegmann, Walkers
As part of the Digital Finance Package, the EU DLT pilot regime commenced in March 2023, creating a sandbox for DLT operators of market infrastructure to conduct the trading and settlement of DLT financial instruments. 2.6 Jurisdiction of Regulators The Central Bank is the financial services regulator in Ireland, with responsibility for the authorisation and supervision of financial services providers. It super - vises Irish firms from both a prudential and conduct- of-business perspective. For EEA passporting firms, the Central Bank will generally have a level of compe - tence in relation to conduct-of-business requirements, rather than prudential requirements. The European Central Bank is the competent licensing authority for new Irish credit institutions (banks), and supervises significant credit institutions directly. The Data Protection Commission is the Irish supervi - sory authority for the GDPR. Coimisiún na Meán is the designated Digital Services Co-ordinator in Ireland, implementing and enforcing the Irish Digital Services Act 2024. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is also des - ignated for certain matters relating to online market - places. 2.7 No-Action Letters The Central Bank does not issue “no-action” letters as part of its enforcement regime. Nonetheless, the ESAs have a legal basis to issue no-action letters in certain circumstances. Where the ESAs issue a no- action letter stating that competent authorities should not prioritise any supervisory or enforcement action in relation to a certain legislative act, this may influence actions taken by the Central Bank. 2.8 Outsourcing of Regulated Functions If a regulated function is outsourced, the vendor is likely to require authorisation to provide that service, unless it can rely on an exemption. Separately, a num - ber of rules and requirements may apply to already regulated firms that are engaged in the outsourcing of regulated and unregulated functions. These are generally sector-specific – eg, the PSR and MiFID II
contain outsourcing requirements that are relevant to in-scope firms. By contrast, the Central Bank Cross-Industry Guid - ance on Outsourcing (CBI Outsourcing Guidance) applies across sectors to all regulated firms and must be considered alongside specific outsourcing rules under the various sectoral legislation. The CBI Out - sourcing Guidance is heavily influenced by the EBA Guidelines on outsourcing arrangements (EBA Out - sourcing Guidelines), which are applicable to credit institutions, payment institutions and electronic mon - ey institutions, for example. In addition, DORA applies to in-scope financial entities and requires that all contracts between financial enti - ties and ICT third-party service providers for the use of outsourced ICT services must meet certain minimum The extent to which any fintech provider is deemed a “gatekeeper” for activities on its platform will depend on its activities or the services it provides. Fintech providers may be subject to various authorisation requirements or may fall within the scope of Irish AML legislation. The Criminal Justice Act 2011 imposes a report - ing obligation on a person who has information that said person “knows or believes might be of material assistance” in preventing or prosecuting a “relevant offence”, who must disclose this information to the Garda Síochána (the Irish police force). The Digital Markets Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/1925) (DMA) became applicable from May 2023 and requires gatekeepers that have established a “core platform service” – search engines, social networking services, app stores, web browsers, etc – to abide by various requirements around fairness and transparency. 2.10 Significant Enforcement Actions The Central Bank took four enforcement actions in 2025 in a broad range of areas where breaches of financial services legislation have been committed by regulated entities. In November 2025, the Central Bank fined Coinbase Europe Limited EUR21,464,734 contractual requirements. 2.9 Gatekeeper Liability
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