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Ireland replaced the schedules to its 2025 AI Act designation regulations and spread market surveillance across more than a dozen existing regulators
Ireland did not hand the AI Act to a single new regulator. It spread it across the regulators it already had, with its month-old AI Office added as one authority among many, and the seams between those pieces are where the interesting questions sit.
Bottom line: Binding. This is a statutory instrument made under section 3 of the European Communities Act 1972, signed and sealed, with notice of its making published in Iris Oifigiuil. It amends S.I. No. 366 of 2025 and substitutes new schedules for the old one.
Who this affects: Irish and EU regulatory counsel advising providers and deployers of high-risk AI, in-house compliance leads at regulated financial service providers, online intermediaries and broadcasters, medical device and machinery manufacturers placing product on the Irish market, and employers deploying AI in recruitment or workplace decisions.
Issue date: Given under the Minister's Official Seal on 31 July 2026. Notice of the making of the instrument was published in Iris Oifigiuil of 7 August 2026.
What changed: The single schedule of the 2025 regulations is replaced by three. Schedule 1 assigns Section A of Annex I product areas, Schedule 2 assigns Annex III high-risk categories, Schedule 3 assigns the Article 5 prohibited practices. Coimisiun na Mean picks up Article 50 for intermediaries and media services, and Oifig IS na hEireann is designated a market surveillance authority for Article 70(1).
Analysis: Look at Schedule 3. Ireland split the Article 5 prohibitions by the identity of the actor, not by the practice. The same prohibited practice in point (a) or (b) is policed by Coimisiun na Mean if the actor is an online or media service, by the Central Bank if the actor is a regulated financial service provider, and, for point (c), by the Data Protection Commission only where the Central Bank entry does not apply. Who supervises you depends on what you are, not on what your model did.
Primary sources: S.I. No. 405/2026, Irish Statute Book · Official PDF
- Instrument (EN)
- European Union (Artificial Intelligence) (Designation) (Amendment) Regulations 2026
- Number
- S.I. No. 405 of 2026
- Authority
- Peter Burke, Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment
- Jurisdiction
- Ireland
- Status
- Made. Amends S.I. No. 366 of 2025.
- Bindingness
- Binding secondary legislation, made under section 3 of the European Communities Act 1972 to give further effect to Regulation (EU) 2024/1689.
- Issue date / next deadline
- Sealed 31 July 2026; notice of making published in Iris Oifigiuil of 7 August 2026. The instrument states no commencement date of its own.
- Primary source
- https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2026/si/405/made/en/print
What the instrument does
Peter Burke, Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, made these regulations under section 3 of the European Communities Act 1972 for the purpose of giving further effect to Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the AI Act. They amend the European Union (Artificial Intelligence) (Designation) Regulations 2025, S.I. No. 366 of 2025.
The mechanism is mostly surgery on definitions and schedules. Regulation 2(1) of the 2025 instrument gains a set of new definitions borrowed from other regimes: audiovisual media service and sound broadcasting service from the Broadcasting Act 2009, content provider from Regulation (EU) 2021/784 on terrorist content online, intermediary service from Article 3(g) of the Digital Services Act, critical entity from the European Union (Resilience of Critical Entities) Regulations 2024, regulated financial service provider and financial services from the Central Bank Act 1942, and hosting service by reference to Directive (EU) 2015/1535. The definition of Minister is deleted and replaced in the operative text by the full title of the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment.
Then the whole schedule of the 2025 regulations is substituted with three new schedules. That is the substance.
Schedule 1: the product regimes
Schedule 1 designates, for each point of Section A of Annex I, a market surveillance authority as national competent authority for the purposes of Article 70(1).
The Health and Safety Authority takes machinery used in the workplace, plus points 4, 5 and 7, non-domestic gas appliances, and personal protective equipment in the workplace. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission takes point 2, the consumer product side of point 9, and domestic gas appliances. The Marine Survey Office takes point 3, the Commission for Communications Regulation takes point 6, the Commission for Railway Regulation takes point 8, and the Health Products Regulatory Authority takes points 11 and 12.
The splits inside points 9 and 10 are the notable part. The same product category is divided between two regulators according to whether it is a consumer item or a workplace item, and whether a gas appliance is domestic or not. A manufacturer selling into both channels reports to both.
Schedule 2: Annex III high-risk
Schedule 2 assigns Annex III points to bodies designated as market surveillance authority.
The Data Protection Commission carries the largest share: point 1 insofar as it relates to law enforcement, border management, justice and democracy, and education and vocational training, plus points 6, 7 and 8. The Workplace Relations Commission takes point 4, the employment category. The Health Service Executive takes the healthcare slices of points 5(a) and 5(d). The Central Bank of Ireland takes points 5(b) and 5(c) where a regulated financial service provider is placing on the market, putting into service or using a high-risk system in direct connection with the provision of financial services.
Point 2, critical infrastructure, is broken into four entries pinned to specific rows of the Schedule to the Resilience of Critical Entities Regulations 2024: critical digital infrastructure to the Commission for Communications Regulation, road traffic management to the National Transport Authority, and gas, heating, electricity and water supply to the Commission for Regulation of Utilities. Regulation 4(1) as substituted separately designates the Central Bank for Article 74(6) in the same financial services context.
Schedule 3 and the Article 50 designation
Schedule 3 is the one to read twice. It designates bodies as market surveillance authority for points of Article 5(1), the prohibited practices, and it does so by reference to who is doing the placing on the market, putting into service or use.
For points (a) and (b), Coimisiun na Mean is the authority where the actor is an intermediary service, an audiovisual media service, a sound broadcasting service, a relevant designated online service or a hosting service; the Central Bank of Ireland is the authority where the actor is a regulated financial service provider acting in direct connection with financial services. For point (c) the Central Bank takes the financial services case and the Data Protection Commission takes everything else. Points (d), (e), (g) and (h) go to the Data Protection Commission. Point (f), other than in relation to education institutions, goes to the Workplace Relations Commission.
Alongside the schedules, new Regulation 4(3) designates Coimisiun na Mean as market surveillance authority for Article 50, the transparency obligations, for providers or deployers falling into the same five service categories. New Regulation 4(4) designates Oifig IS na hEireann as a market surveillance authority for Article 70(1). And a new Regulation 5(2) puts the Irish National Accreditation Board in charge of the Article 28(1) assessment and monitoring of three of the four designated notifying authorities.
Reading the map before you need it
By our count the instrument names fourteen distinct bodies as market surveillance authorities across the three schedules and Regulation 4(4). We counted them from the text; the instrument itself gives no total.
The practical consequence for a provider or deployer is that the first compliance question in Ireland is not which Annex you fall under. It is which of your activities, and which of your legal characterisations, pull you into which schedule. A regulated financial service provider that also runs a hosting service can sit in two rows of Schedule 3 at once, answering to the Central Bank for one activity and to Coimisiun na Mean for another.
Point (f) of Article 5(1) carves out education institutions from the Workplace Relations Commission's remit without naming a substitute in that row. We note the carve-out because it is in the text; we do not know where those cases land, and the instrument as printed does not say.
What we did not verify
We opened the print version of S.I. No. 405/2026 on the Irish Statute Book in full, including all three substituted schedules, the amended definitions, and the Minister's seal and date.
We did not open S.I. No. 366 of 2025 in its unamended form, the AI Act itself, the Broadcasting Act 2009, the Central Bank Act 1942, the European Union (Resilience of Critical Entities) Regulations 2024, the Digital Services Act, or Iris Oifigiuil of 7 August 2026. We did not open the official PDF, only the HTML print view.
We do not claim to know what any specific Annex III point or Article 5(1) point says. The schedules reference them by number, and we reproduce the references without asserting their content. We also make no claim about enforcement powers, penalties or procedures, because this instrument designates authorities and does not confer them.
Ireland's AI Act supervision is now a map of existing regulators rather than a single authority, and the map is drawn by actor type as much as by risk category. Before asking what obligations an AI system creates in Ireland, work out which of the fourteen designated bodies would be the one asking. For firms that are simultaneously regulated financial service providers, online intermediaries and employers, the answer is plural, and each of those regulators has its own culture of enquiry.
Source File
https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2026/si/405/made/en/print
Open the Irish Statute Book print view of S.I. No. 405/2026 and confirm the seal date of 31 July 2026, the Iris Oifigiuil notice of 7 August 2026, the substitution of three schedules for the single schedule of S.I. No. 366 of 2025, the Coimisiun na Mean Article 50 designation in new Regulation 4(3), and the actor-based split of Article 5(1) points in Schedule 3.
For the purposes of Article 70(1), each of the market surveillance authorities specified in the third column of Schedule 1 is designated as the national competent authority for the purpose of the point of Section A, Annex I specified in the second column of that Schedule opposite mention of the market surveillance authority concerned. ยท S.I. No. 405/2026, substituted Regulation 3, sealed 31 July 2026
FAQ
Did Ireland create a new AI regulator?
No new regulator is created by this instrument. It designates bodies that already exist, including the Data Protection Commission, the Central Bank of Ireland, the Workplace Relations Commission, the Health and Safety Authority and Coimisiun na Mean, as market surveillance authorities for specified points of the AI Act, and it adds Oifig IS na hEireann, established in July 2026, as a market surveillance authority for Article 70(1).
Who supervises Article 50 transparency in Ireland?
New Regulation 4(3) designates Coimisiun na Mean as market surveillance authority for Article 50 where the provider or deployer is an intermediary service, an audiovisual media service, a sound broadcasting service, a relevant designated online service or a hosting service. The instrument does not designate an Article 50 authority for actors outside those five categories.
Which regulator handles AI in employment?
Schedule 2 assigns point 4 of Annex III to the Workplace Relations Commission. Schedule 3 assigns point (f) of Article 5(1), other than in relation to education institutions, to the same body.
When did this take effect?
The instrument was given under the Minister's Official Seal on 31 July 2026, and notice of its making was published in Iris Oifigiuil of 7 August 2026. The text as printed contains no separate commencement provision, and we do not assert a commencement date beyond what the instrument shows.
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