Irish Data Protection Law – The Key Differences For UK Organisations

UK Organisations which do business in Ireland and process personal data often assume that compliance with the GDPR is sufficient in order to process the personal data of Irish individuals or assume that the UK Data Protection Act is virtually identical to its Irish counterpart. This is not necessarily the case – while the Irish Data Protection Act 2018 is the overarching piece of data privacy legislation in this jurisdiction and, similarly to its UK equivalent, implemented the provisions of the GDPR, the Irish Act contains a number of provisions specific to this jurisdiction and is impacted by a wide variety of other Acts and Regulations, sector-specific and otherwise.

Given the difficulties and complexities our UK-based clients often face when seeking to understand and apply the provisions of the above legislation to the processing of personal data in Ireland, we have set out below a summary of the key requirements specific to the Irish privacy regime and the most