Ireland Company Register: How to Search the CRO and Verify Irish Companies (2026)

1. What is the Irish company register?

The Companies Registration Office, in Irish an Oifig um Chlárú Cuideachtaí, is the central repository of public statutory information on Irish companies, business names, and limited partnerships. It operates under the aegis of the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, and its core jobs are incorporating companies, enforcing their filing obligations, and making company information public. There is one office and one national register, so there are no regional courts or chambers to work through.

Almost everything runs through CORE, the Companies Online Registration Environment. Companies file on it, and anyone can search it for the companies, limited partnerships, and business names registered in the State. The legal framework is the Companies Act 2014, which replaced the Companies Acts 1963-2013 on 1 June 2015 and set the company types you see on the register today. Around CORE sit three other official sources worth knowing:

In short: CORE tells you a company exists, what type it is, and what it has filed. The filed documents tell you who runs it and how it performs, and you pay for each one.

2. How to search the CRO step by step

Searching is free and needs no account. The CRO says basic information such as the company name and registered office address can be checked free of charge on CORE. The interface is in English, with a language menu in the top right, and the search takes a company name or a CRO number.

1. Open the CORE search and pick the register

   Choose what you are searching first. Entity covers the companies, business names, and limited partnerships on CORE. Auditor and Disqualified/Restricted Person search two separate lists, and the second one comes back in the verification checklist below.

   

2. Search by number when you have one

   Type the plain number into the Entity Number field, with no prefix. A number search is the quickest route to the right record. Still check that the result is the company you expect rather than a business name or a limited partnership, because all three sit in the same Entity search.

3. Search by name with the right match type

   Contains word is selected by default. Switch to Starts with or Exact Match when a common word returns too many hits. Irish company names can legally end in the Irish form of the suffix, such as Teoranta instead of Limited, so search on the distinctive part of the name rather than on the suffix.

4. Open the company record

   The free profile shows the registered number and name, the company type, the status and the date it took effect, the registration date, the next annual return date, and the registered address. Two more tabs, Previous Names and Events, sit next to it.

   

5. Buy the documents and reports you need

   The Documents tab lists every filing with the date it was registered and the date it took effect, 1,165 of them for Ryanair, and a filter box narrows the list down. The Reports tab is where you order a letter of status or a duplicate certificate. You can pay for documents by debit or credit card without a CORE account; you only need one to file.

3. What data is public and what it costs

Ireland splits cleanly: the index is free and the paper is paid. The search, the profile, the list of filings, the API, and the open data file cost nothing. Every document behind the list carries a fee fixed by the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, which the CRO itself calls a small fee.

Two things stand out. First, the basic company data is free in every format: on screen, through the Open Services API, and as a daily file on the CRO Open Data Portal, which the CRO launched in May 2025 and which publishes company records as an EU high-value dataset. Second, the free data stops at the index. The portal's Financial Statements dataset, for 2022, 2023, and 2024, lists which statements were filed, with file name, company number, submission number, and dates. The figures themselves are still inside the filed document, at €2.50 a copy.

What you will not find on the free record at all: directors, shareholders, revenue, employee numbers, phone numbers, or email addresses. Directors appear in filed forms, such as Form B10 for a change of director or secretary, which must reach the CRO within 14 days of the change. Financial figures appear in the financial statements attached to the annual return, the Form B1 every company files at least once a year.

4. Irish legal forms, briefly

Under the Companies Act 2014, the most common company type on the register is the LTD, a private company limited by shares with no objects clause that can undertake any activity. A private company whose constitution limits it to set objects is a designated activity company, or DAC. CORE states the type in full on the record, such as Designated Activity Company (limited by shares) on Ryanair's, and every form has an English and an Irish name ending.

The 2014 Act gave existing private companies limited by shares an 18-month transition period. During it they could re-register as a DAC by an ordinary resolution passed at least three months before the period ended. Ryanair's row in the CRO's open data file dates its current name and company type to 15 September 2016. The same file still carries older type labels, such as Private limited by shares and Single member private company limited by shares, next to the 2014 Act ones, so if you match on legal form, map both generations.

CORE also holds entities that are not companies. A business name is a registered trading name under the Registration of Business Names Act 1963; registering it makes public the individual, partnership, or company that is the legal entity behind the name. A limited partnership registers under the Limited Partnership Act 1907 and needs at least one general and one limited partner. A foreign company that opens a branch in Ireland must register it as an external company within 30 days, under Part 21 of the Companies Act 2014. Industrial and provident societies, friendly societies, and trade unions are registered with the Registry of Friendly Societies, not with the CRO.

5. How to verify an Irish company: a practical checklist

1. Confirm the number, the type, and the address

   Search the CRO number on CORE and check that the name, company type, and registered address match what you were given, and that the hit is a company rather than a business name. For a quick first pass, our free company lookup finds the registration and revenue data in one search.

2. Treat any status other than Normal as a question

   Normal is the status of a live company such as Ryanair. Other values in the register include Strike Off Listed, Struck Off, Liquidation, Examinership, and Dissolved. Strike-off follows a fixed sequence: a statutory notice to the registered office, a notice in the CRO Gazette 28 days later, and strike-off 28 days after that unless the missing returns are filed. A struck-off company ceases to exist as a legal entity, and its assets become the property of the State.

3. Check the annual return record

   The profile shows the next annual return date, and the return is due within 56 days of it. Failing to file can get a company struck off, and the CRO strikes off over 11,000 companies a year on average. A late return costs a €100 late fee plus €3 a day, up to €1,200, and a company that files late more than once in five years loses its audit exemption. A history of late returns is worth asking about.

4. Compare the letterhead and the website

   Irish limited companies must show their legal form, place of registration, registered number, and registered office on business letters and order forms, including email, and on a readily accessible page of their website. Invoices and delivery notes do not have to carry these details, so check a letter, an order form, or the website. If the number there does not match the register, stop there.

5. Buy the latest accounts, and check whose they are

   Buy the most recent annual return and the financial statements attached to it, €2.50 each. Then check whose figures they are. A private subsidiary of a parent in the EEA can file a Section 357 notice and an irrevocable guarantee from its parent, plus the parent's consolidated financial statements, instead of its own accounts. Ryanair's latest filing set includes both: a Section 357 notice and a set of consolidated financial statements.

6. Check the directors

   Directors are not on the free profile, so buy the recent Form B10 filings for changes of director or secretary. Then search each name in CORE's Disqualified/Restricted Person register. A restriction lasts five years, and a restricted director may only act for a company with at least €100,000 of paid-up share capital (€500,000 for a PLC or a public unlimited company). At least one director must also be resident in the EEA, or the company must file a bond instead.

7. Ask for the beneficial owners directly

   Beneficial ownership sits in the separate Register of Beneficial Ownership. Competent authorities get full access and designated persons under anti-money-laundering law restricted access, while the public view is limited. If you are neither, ask the counterparty for the details: every company must keep its own internal beneficial ownership register.

8. Get a letter of status for formal proof

   If a bank or a tender needs written proof, order a letter of status from the Reports tab on CORE. The CRO describes it as proof that the company is incorporated and authorised to undertake business in Ireland.

6. Limitations of the official register

To be clear: for a handful of lookups, CORE is quick, cheap, and open to anyone, and the open data file is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0. The limits show up when you need people, numbers, or scale:

• No directors on the free record. Directors, secretaries, and shareholders live in filed forms you buy one by one.
• Accounts are document images, not data. Each set costs €2.50, and the free open data only indexes which statements were filed.
• The filed accounts may not be the full picture. Subsidiaries can file their parent's consolidated statements under section 357, small companies can file abridged statements built around the balance sheet and notes, the first annual return carries no statements, and a non-designated private unlimited company may file an auditor's report or no accounts at all.
• No firmographics. Revenue as a field, employee counts, phone numbers, and email addresses are not in the register. The open data file has a NACE Rev. 2 field, but among live companies it is filled almost only for those registered since June 2015. Ryanair, registered in 1984, has none.
• Two generations of labels. The open data mixes company type labels from before and after the 2014 Act, so a filter on legal form misses companies unless you map the old labels.
• Processing lag. The CRO's daily processing notice of 2 October 2026 showed it working on ordinary online company applications received on 24 September, and business name registrations can wait up to four weeks.
• Ownership is closed. The public view of the Register of Beneficial Ownership shows the entity and the number of beneficial owners filed, not who they are.
• Bulk access is expensive. The licensed daily data update costs €31,000 a year and the document images €47,520 a year, with no option to buy a subset.

If you check one Irish supplier a quarter, none of this matters. If you onboard hundreds, it is the whole problem.

7. Access CRO data programmatically

CompanyData maintains a normalized database of all 401,198 Irish entities, sourced directly from the Companies Registration Office and refreshed as new filings appear. CRO numbers are already parsed and validated, filed financial statements are read out of the document images into structured fields, and records are enriched with revenue, employees, and contact data that the official register does not publish at all.

The CRO's own Open Services API is free and worth knowing about, but it returns the same basic data as the CORE search, needs a signed copy of its terms and conditions before you get full access, and charges the normal price per image for documents. Our Company Data API lets you look up any Irish entity by CRO number, name, or address and get structured JSON back in real time, with 150 free lookups to start and no CORE checkout. It is used by developers, banks, and insurers across 190+ countries, so Irish checks work exactly like checks anywhere else.

GET /v1/companies?country=IE&registration_id=104547

{
  "name": "RYANAIR DESIGNATED ACTIVITY COMPANY",
  "legal_form": "DAC",
  "registration_id": "104547",
  "city": "Swords",
  "status": "normal"
}

Every field above is what the free CORE profile shows for Ryanair in the record screenshot in section 2. Revenue, employees, and contact details come back on the same record where we hold them, and are absent here for the reason this guide keeps running into: the CRO does not publish them as data.

8. Ireland vs other company registers

Ireland gives away the index, an official API, and a daily open data file, and charges for the paperwork. For context: