Legislation programme
The government published its Legislation Programme for spring 2026, listing 30 bills for priority publication and 19 bills currently before the Dail. Legislation in progress includes the Short Term Letting and Tourism Bill (to provide for new regulatory controls requiring short-term lettings to be registered with Fáilte Ireland); Residential Tenancies (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill (which reforms rent regulation and tenancy protections); and the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill.
Consumer protection
The Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment launched a public consultation on proposed legislative measures to strengthen consumer protection and enforcement in Ireland.
Part-time employees
Minister Alan Dillon has signed a revised Code of Practice on Access to Part‑Time Working into law. The updated code provides practical guidance to help employers and employees agree part‑time arrangements that support flexible, inclusive and modern workplaces.
Guidance on early years Core Funding has been revised
Core Funding
The Department of Children, Disability and Equality has issued revised guidance for accountants assisting clients in applying for early years Core Funding, a grant scheme that provides funding directly to early learning and childcare service providers.
All service providers that had an active Core Funding contract during the 1 September 2024-31 August 2025 programme year (year 3) must engage a qualified professional accountant to submit a financial return. The accountant can be an employee of the provider (if certain conditions are met) or an independent qualified accountant who holds a practising certificate and professional indemnity insurance.
For the 2024/2025 programme year, accountants will need to submit a trial balance prepared at site level using accruals-based accounting. Submission of the trial balance prepared using accruals-based accounting is a change for year 3, given returns submitted in years 1 and 2 used cash-based accounting.
By time of publication, the department should have finalising the Core Funding Contractual Requirements Reporting System portal and supporting guidance. Charts of accounts and nominal codes guidance documents for year 3 have been added to the department’s Hive website.
The EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority is consulting on new supervision rules
Large energy users
Peter Burke TD, Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, and Darragh O’Brien TD, Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment, have published a Large Energy User Action Plan. The core of the strategy is to locate new large energy users, such as semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, precision engineering and data centres, near renewable energy sources.
CEA
The Corporate Enforcement Authority (CEA) has published its February 2026 newsletter, giving updates on its activities and news of the past few months. It includes details about the five-year disqualification of landlord Marc Godart, a director of 40 Irish companies, from acting as a company director. It also has details of separate cases where CEA was successful in prosecuting a company for failing to keep adequate accounting records.
Revenue performance
Revenue has published a summary of its Service Delivery Report for quarter 4 of 2025. The summary notes nearly seven million logins to MyAccount and just over 100,000 claims by taxpayers for credits or reliefs. The 37,500 business taxes registrations in just three months does sound very encouraging for our country’s entrepreneurial spirit, showing an increase on quarter 3, where there were 1,000 fewer new registrations. MyEnquiries received just over 600,000 requests, with 64% being responded to within the estimated response time, an improvement on 41% in quarter 3 of 2025.
Anti-money laundering
The EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) has launched a number of consultations on proposed new rules for AML supervision in Europe, including in the non-financial services sector, which includes accountants in practice. The consultations can be accessed via AMLA’s public consultations webpage. AMLA will be responsible ultimately for how ACCA regulates members for AML and, more immediately, how the financial services sector is regulated.
AMLA has also launched a data collection exercise to test risk-assessment models for the financial sector. This will allow AMLA to select up to 40 EU financial institutions for direct supervision, while the remaining smaller financial institutions will be regulated by the various national regulators across the EU, who will themselves be supervised by AMLA. Find out more in AMLA’s Single Programming Document for 2026-28.
