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On the 12th of November 2021 Ireland transposed the provisions of the DSM directive by way of the European Union (Copyright and Related Rights in the Digital Single Market) Regulations 2021 (Statutory Instrument No. 567 of 2021).
Procedure:
The Irish transposition of the directive was done by way of a statutory instrument. There has been no parliamentary debate before the instrument was signed into law. In 2019, the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation organized 4 public consultations, each on a different part of the Directive.
Article 17:
The Irish implementation of Article 17 restates the text of the Directive. As such it does not contain any specific ex-ante safeguards for users rights or additional transparency provisions. It also does not narrow down the definition of platforms affected by these rules.
Other:
The Irish implementation of the new educational exception for online uses maintains the licensing carve out that already applied to the existing exception for educational use. Article 14 has not been transposed, since the existing copyright act does not protect unoriginal reproductions. The scope of the press publisher right is relatively limited, but is not subject to all the existing exceptions and limitations to copyright.
Bonus:
For the new exceptions, the Irish transposition stipulates that, when beneficiaries have “legal access to the relevant protected work or subject matter, the relevant author or performer shall ensure that that beneficiary has the means of benefiting from that exception or limitation to the extent necessary to do so”.
After running a series of public pre-draft consultations, each focused on a different part of the Directed and all carefully prepared, the Irish government decided to transpose the Directive by way of Regulations contained in secondary legislation, without submitting the actual draft law to public discussion and without further parliamentary debate.
The Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation claims to have taken note of the submissions received over the course of the stakeholder consultation process and to have prepared a law that is “guided by the overarching objective of providing a copyright legislative framework fit for the digital age but which represents a balanced consideration of the interests of all stakeholders”. On the 12th of November 2021 Ireland transposed the provisions of the directive by way of the European Union (Copyright and Related Rights in the Digital Single Market) Regulations 2021 (Statutory Instrument No. 567 of 2021).
The resulting statutory instrument is a largely literal implementation of the directive that does not substantially deviate from the text of the directive in either direction. The transposition of articles 15 and 17 stays as close to the text of the directive as possible and the other provisions have been implemented into the text of the existing copyright act in line with the text of the directive. Ireland already had a licensing override mechanism for the educational exception which has been maintained for the provisions based on article 5 of the directive.
Local partners:
For more information please see our implementation tracking page for Ireland.
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