Colm Keena: Yes. The possible move would seriously hamper journalists and deliver a blow to the public’s right to know
Secrecy is big business. Offshore accounts. Money the taxman doesn’t know about. Connections voters don’t know about. Business links the parties involved don’t want others to know about. Ownership of property that’s in the news, be it local, national, or international. What the scoundrel is up to now.
Go on the internet and you’ll find global financial services firms, niche company secretarial firms, even whole jurisdictions, offering privacy. Chasing capital, looking for new business, searching for fees, is a relentless international scramble. Lobbying in favour of privacy is likewise unceasing.
The Government is considering changing the law so that the home addresses of company directors, which are currently publicly available from documents filed to the Companies Registration Office, will no longer be available. Such a move will seriously hamper journalists seeking to report on the activities of people who make use of corporate vehicles for their business and financial activities. The public should be concerned because such a change will negatively impact their right to know.
Setting up a company conveys huge benefits. Businesspeople can take risks, assume debts and take on responsibilities, knowing that if their aspirations don’t work out, they won’t necessarily spend the rest of their lives dealing with the consequences. Companies can convey limited liability, meaning that the debts of the company don’t automatically become the debts of the owner of the company should the company fail.
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The introduction by society of these benefits facilitated an explosion of wealth creation and the type of societies we in the developed world enjoy today. A quid pro quo was the idea of publicly available company filings to allow those interested to know who owns and controls a particular incorporated entity, and what the financial health or otherwise of that entity is.
Making use of corporate filings is an everyday activity for journalists. They can, for instance, discover that someone who recently made a killing from a business deal has recorded a new home address in a recent annual return. Having lived in Stillorgan or Skibbereen for most of their life, they now live in Malta or Gibraltar or some other jurisdiction associated with aggressive tax planning.
A journalist may, while working on a profile of a person involved in a range of business activities, start by seeing what companies that person is a director of, knowing they’ve got the right person because they have the date of birth and residential address. If the reporter also has information on shareholdings, the directorship address will help the reporter know they are not confusing two people with the same name. Sometimes, when working on stories, it is the address that is the starting point for the reporter. The address can lead to identifying the person, revealing connections the reporter was not aware of.
[ Companies’ register could drop directors’ home addresses amid safety concernsOpens in new window ]
Shutting down this valuable tool is a blow to the public’s right to know. The proposed change will see public access to a director’s “usual residential address” being changed to access to a “contact address”. In the UK, it is commonplace now for a company and the director to both give the address of a mailbox or virtual office service provider used by hundreds of companies that have no other relationship with one another. Already, in this jurisdiction, huge numbers of companies use mailbox services as their registered company address.
Because of a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, Irish journalists no longer have unrestricted access to a register that records the ultimate beneficial ownership of companies (sometimes an Irish company is owned by an offshore company, obscuring who the beneficial owner is). Not having access to the usual residential address of directors will be another move towards secrecy. And secrecy, in turn, can erode trust.
Colm Keena is an Irish Times journalist
Neil Keenan: No. Having the home addresses of company officers available to the public is neither reasonable nor necessary
The question of whether company directors’ residential addresses should remain publicly accessible goes to the heart of how we balance transparency with personal safety in a modern corporate law regime.
In September 2025, the Company Law Review Group (CLRG) ignited a debate by recommending the residential addresses of company officers should no longer be publicly available. This has attracted considerable media commentary.
This change is essential to ensure the safety and security of directors and others who may live at such an address. It will help make Ireland a safer place to do business and ensure it is not unduly disadvantaged when decisions on inward investment are being made.
Under the proposal, a residential address will still have to be filed and be available to the appropriate authorities, as well as being available to facilitate the service of legal proceedings on the officer should the circumstance arise.
Opponents of the measure point out that the availability of residential addresses allows journalists to establish ownership of a company and unravel company structures. They argue that the availability of residential addresses is a crucial mechanism for ensuring accuracy, pursuing wrongdoing and giving peace of mind that a director or a company a person may be dealing with is legitimate. It has also been said that the change recommended is “anti-democratic”.
Some argue that part of the social contract which gives the benefit of limited liability means the individual should be publicly identifiable.
[ John McManus: Why we need to know where company directors liveOpens in new window ]
These points are well made and the vast majority of company officers and their advisers would not want to impede investigative journalism or the highlighting of fraud and corruption. However, the social contract implied by limited liability does not mean the safety and security of company officers – and those who live with them – should be put at risk. Nor does it mean they should be more exposed to financial fraud or identity theft than anybody else in society.
A UK government report in 2018 noted that the availability of addresses resulted in directors being twice as likely as others to be the victim of identity fraud. We should keep in mind that many company officers are not themselves business owners, but become a company officer as part of their employment conditions.
The concern around the publication of directors’ residential addresses is an entirely different one to transparency over the ownership of a company. A decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2022 found that public access was inconsistent with certain provisions in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Transparency on the beneficial ownership of corporate entities is essential and the constraints caused by that particular decision need to be addressed at EU level.
The CLRG undertook a detailed consultation process before making its recommendation that the residential addresses of company directors should no longer be publicly accessible. This process included presentations to the CLRG from both Transparency Ireland and the Data Protection Commission, so this recommendation was not made on the basis of the views only of lawyers, business groups or multinational companies. Transparency Ireland made a clear distinction between the ability to identify a company officer and the ability to locate that individual’s home address.
Individual directors are now clearly identifiable by the Companies Registration Office (CRO) and other relevant authorities, as they must provide their tax identification numbers to them.
Other jurisdictions have come up with reasonable solutions. In Singapore, directors can file an alternative contact address for the public register. In New Zealand, measures to suppress the residential address were introduced in 2024. Other EU member states such as the Netherlands allow either a residential address or a business address to be supplied. In the UK, a system of confidentiality was introduced in 2006 and was enhanced subsequently. Ireland is an outlier.
The CLRG does not recommend that any change be retrospective so that existing residential addresses which have already been filed and are available would not be redacted or expunged. But it is important that existing company officers do have an option to have their addresses made confidential.
The privilege of limited liability should not come at the cost of personal safety or enhanced risks of identity fraud. Having the home addresses of company officers available to the public is neither reasonable nor necessary.
Neil Keenan is a member of the Business Law Committee of the Law Society of Ireland and is a corporate law partner with Pinsent Masons Ireland LLP. He is the Law Society’s representative on the CLRG.
