Closing a company in Ireland: routes, rules and your records

How to close a company in Ireland

Voluntary strike-off is used when the company never carried on business or has ceased to, and within 3 months the members resolved to apply. Each director signs Form H15 stating that assets do not exceed 150 euro, liabilities do not exceed 150 euro, and there is no outstanding litigation. Annual returns are filed, Revenue does not object in a letter no more than 3 months old, and a newspaper notice ran within 30 days. Members' voluntary winding up is used when a majority of the directors declare, after inquiry, that the company can pay its debts in full within 12 months. Within 30 days the members pass a special resolution to wind up and appoint a liquidator. The resolution is advertised in Iris Oifigiúil within 14 days.

Dissolution and liquidation routes

The registry

The Companies Registration Office. A voluntary strike-off is a request on Form H15, filed online, not an automatic deletion. The filing fee is 15 euro. The Registrar publishes a notice in the CRO Gazette and, if no objection arrives, dissolves the company on a second notice at least 90 days later. Form H16 lets a member of the public object, and Form H17 lets the company cancel the process, both inside that 90-day window. The Registrar's power to strike a company off is discretionary.

Employees: consultation and notice

The Workplace Relations Commission says the Protection of Employment Acts 1977 to 2024 require an employer who proposes a collective redundancy to consult employees' representatives for at least 30 days and to notify the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Consultation starts at the earliest opportunity and at least 30 days before the first notice of dismissal, and it must aim at agreement. The employer gives the reasons, the numbers and categories, the selection criteria, the period, and the method for any extra redundancy pay. No notice of redundancy may be issued during that consultation. Employees also cannot be made redundant until at least 30 days after the Minister has been notified. Copies of the information go to the Minister as soon as possible.

For staff who worked in a US state, read final paycheck and WARN rules by state.

Data protection when the company closes

The General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018. The Data Protection Commission says the GDPR has applied since 25 May 2018 and is directly applicable in every EU member state. Ireland's Data Protection Act 2018 gives the GDPR further effect in national law. Where processing is for law enforcement, the Commission says the GDPR does not apply and the law-enforcement rules in that Act apply instead.

The Data Protection Commission. The Commission is the authority that explains when the GDPR applies in Ireland and when the Data Protection Act 2018 applies instead, including for law-enforcement processing.

The Data Protection Commission says data is outside the GDPR when people are no longer identifiable, and a person does not have to be named to be identifiable. If other information can connect one person in a group to the data, that person may still be identified. If the original information is not securely deleted, the Commission treats the result as pseudonymized data, which remains personal data. The law does not prescribe one technique.

Where the GDPR applies, read GDPR and de-identified records before you treat the filing as a US privacy rule.

Records to keep

Section 285 of the Companies Act 2014. A company preserves an accounting record required by section 281, and information or a return referred to in section 283(2), for at least 6 years after the end of the financial year that contains the latest date to which the record, information, or return relates. Section 283 says the records are kept at the registered office or another place the directors choose. If they are kept outside the State, information and returns that show the assets, liabilities, financial position, and profit or loss at intervals of not more than 6 months must be kept in the State.

What this means for a data license

You give the data partner the right to use your records, with personal details removed, for AI research. Personal details are removed before anything leaves your company. Customer and staff details are never shared. You approve each system before anything is shared. To train and test AI that helps people do their jobs. Never for marketing, and never sold as contact lists. You keep ownership of your data, and full use of it in your business. You agree not to license the same records to anyone else. You sign an NDA and the licensing agreement, directly with the data partner, not with Vetrix. The partner is a US-based AI data company. We tell you the data partner's name before you sign. Read what is shared and what is removed, and read the license terms, before you decide.

You need at least 30 staff at peak, or 25 if most of your staff are in the US, and at least 2 years of records.

Related

• Closing a company by country

  Dissolution or liquidation route, registry, employee notice, and data-protection authority by country.

• Winding down

  Order of operations to wind down a company, from approval through taxes and dissolution.

• Israel

  The Companies Registrar is the registry. One route is Voluntary liquidation.

• Netherlands

  The trade register is the registry. One route is Turbo liquidation.

• Nigeria

  Corporate Affairs Commission is the registry. One route is Striking off.

• What's shared

  Which records can be licensed, which details never leave, and what you approve.

• Systems

  What common business tools do to company data after you cancel, including each vendor deletion window.

• Is it legal?

  What GDPR, US rules, and bankruptcy law say about licensing company data.

Sources

1. Companies Registration Office. Company termination.
2. Companies Registration Office. Voluntary strike-off.
3. Data Protection Commission. Data protection legislation.
4. Data Protection Commission. Anonymisation and pseudonymisation.
5. Workplace Relations Commission. Collective redundancies.
6. Irish Statute Book. Companies Act 2014, section 285.