Registry entry

Ireland Private Company Limited by Shares Incorporation (Form A1)

Incorporate a private company limited by shares (LTD) in Ireland by filing Form A1 and a constitution with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) on CORE, under Part 2 of the Companies Act 2014. Scoped to the single-director, single-secretary, single-subscriber case most relevant to an individual forming their own company (the IE counterpart to gb/companies-house/company-incorporation-in01 and us/ca/sos/business-entity-llc-formation): an LTD company is the only Irish company type that may have just one director, provided it appoints a separate secretary. Filed under the Ordinary Online A1 scheme (10 working days) with either the CRO's standard one-document LTD constitution or a bespoke constitution attached. Designated Activity Companies, public companies, companies limited by guarantee, unlimited companies, multiple directors/subscribers, multiple share classes, the Fé Phráinn A1 fast-track scheme (which requires separate CRO pre-approval of a promoter's constitution template), the optional company-name-reservation pre-step, and the separate post-incorporation Register of Beneficial Ownership (RBO) filing are all out of scope; see VERIFICATION.md. It does not submit the registration; the live cro.ie sources are always authoritative.

Registry entry

ie/cro/company-incorporation

Jurisdiction
Ireland · national
Version
1.1.0
Verification
draft

GovSchema spec v0.3

Authoritative source Form A1 — Form of incorporation of a new company

Machine access

Schema document
registry/ie/cro/company-incorporation/1.1.0/schema.jsonapplication/schema+json
Registry catalog
registry/index.jsonone record per schema id

Field reference

37 fields across 7 steps, read from the published schema.json — names, types, requiredness, and validation as the document states them. The live government form remains the authoritative source.

Company name and business activity

  • companyName string required

    Must end in 'Limited', 'Ltd', 'Teoranta', or 'Teo' (this document's LTD scope only). Must not be identical or similar to a name already on the Register of Companies, offensive, or suggestive of state sponsorship (Companies Act 2014 s.30). Not checked against the separate Register of Business Names or the Trade Mark Register — the CRO does not cross-check those; that is the applicant's responsibility. May optionally be pre-reserved for 28 days via a separate Reserved Company Name (RCN) application, which this document does not model.

    length: 3–150
  • natureOfBusinessDescription string required

    Free-text description of the principal activity the company will carry on in the State. An LTD company has no stated objects in its constitution, but the general nature of the activity must still be given on Form A1.

    length: 1–500
  • naceCode string required

    The NACE (statistical classification of economic activities in the EU) code matching natureOfBusinessDescription, required by the CRO for statistical purposes on every Form A1 regardless of company type.

    pattern

Registered office and email address

  • registeredOfficeAddressLine1 string required

    Every company must have a registered office: the address to which CRO correspondence and all formal legal notices are sent, and where people have a right to inspect certain registers and documents in person. Must be a physical location in the State capable of receiving An Post deliveries — a PO box alone is not sufficient.

    length: 1–160
  • registeredOfficeAddressLine2 string optional

    Town, city, and county, e.g. 'Gloucester Place Lower, Dublin 1'.

    length: 0–160
  • registeredOfficeEircode string optional

    Ireland's postal identifier, e.g. 'D01 F5P2'. Not every registered address has one on file; not confirmed as a mandatory Form A1 field, so modeled as optional pending live-form confirmation.

    length: 0–8
  • companyEmailAddress string required

    An email address for the company, required alongside the registered office on Form A1.

    length: 0–254

Director appointment

  • directorFullName string required

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data. This document scopes to a single individual director — the minimum an LTD company may have, provided a separate secretary is also appointed (see secretaryIsBodyCorporate/secretaryFullName). Every other Irish company type requires a minimum of two directors and is out of scope here. The director must be over 18 and not an undischarged bankrupt (Companies Act 2014 ss.131–132).

    length: 1–160
  • directorDateOfBirth date required

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data. YYYY-MM-DD. Director must be 18 or over (Companies Act 2014 s.131).

    classification: sensitive-pii
  • directorPpsn string optional

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data. A secondary source (cpdstore.ie, 2023) describes PPSN disclosure for company officers as 'soon to be required' on Form A1; the CRO's current published Company Officers guidance does not itself state a firm mandatory date for this specific form (PPSN is separately mandatory for the Register of Beneficial Ownership, which is out of scope of this document). Modeled as optional pending confirmation against the live CORE form at authoring time — flagged in VERIFICATION.md for reviewer attention.

    patternclassification: sensitive-pii
  • directorNationality string required

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data.

    length: 0–100
  • directorOccupation string required

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data.

    length: 0–160
  • directorResidentialAddressLine1 string required

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data.

    length: 1–160
  • directorResidentialAddressLine2 string optional

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data.

    length: 0–160
  • directorResidentialAddressCountry string required

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data. Determines directorIsEeaResident.

    length: 0–100
  • directorOtherDirectorships string optional

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data. Name and registration number of other bodies corporate, incorporated in the State or elsewhere, of which the director is or has been a director. Excludes bodies the director has not directed in the past 5 years, and wholly-owned-subsidiary relationships within the same group. A person may not be a director of more than 25 companies at once (Companies Act 2014 s.142), subject to statutory exceptions.

    length: 0–1000
  • directorIsEeaResident boolean required

    At least one director of every Irish company must be resident in the EEA (the UK left the EEA-resident area on 31 December 2020). Since this document scopes to a single-director LTD company, if this is false the company must instead give a Section 137 bond (see section137BondArranged).

  • section137BondArranged boolean optional

    Required (must be true) when directorIsEeaResident is false. A Section 137 bond (Companies Act 2014 s.137) substitutes for the EEA-resident-director requirement; it is a real insurance bond arranged separately from Form A1 and is not itself submitted with the incorporation, only declared.

Secretary appointment

  • secretaryIsBodyCorporate boolean required

    A body corporate may act as secretary to another company (but not to itself). Because this document scopes to a single-director LTD company, the secretary can never be the same person as the sole director — a single-director LTD company must have a separate secretary. If true, give secretaryCorporateName/secretaryCorporateRegistrationNumber instead of the individual secretary fields.

  • secretaryFullName string optional

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data. Required unless secretaryIsBodyCorporate is true. Must be over 18 (Companies Act 2014 s.131) and a distinct person from directorFullName.

    length: 1–160
  • secretaryDateOfBirth date optional

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data. YYYY-MM-DD. Required unless secretaryIsBodyCorporate is true.

    classification: sensitive-pii
  • secretaryNationality string optional

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data. Required unless secretaryIsBodyCorporate is true.

    length: 0–100
  • secretaryResidentialAddressLine1 string optional

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data. Required unless secretaryIsBodyCorporate is true.

    length: 1–160
  • secretaryResidentialAddressCountry string optional

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data. Required unless secretaryIsBodyCorporate is true.

    length: 0–100
  • secretaryCorporateName string optional

    Required only when secretaryIsBodyCorporate is true.

    length: 1–160
  • secretaryCorporateRegistrationNumber string optional

    Required only when secretaryIsBodyCorporate is true.

    length: 0–40

Subscriber and shareholding

  • subscriberName string required

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data. The subscriber is the initial shareholder who subscribes their name to the constitution and takes at least one share. This document scopes to a single subscriber, matching the single-director individual-founder use case (often the same natural person as directorFullName, though this document models the fields independently since the underlying form does); Form A1 supports multiple subscribers, out of scope here.

    length: 1–160
  • subscriberAddressLine1 string required

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data.

    length: 1–160
  • subscriberAddressLine2 string optional

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data.

    length: 0–160
  • subscriberAddressCountry string required

    Personal identifier; handle as sensitive data.

    length: 0–100
  • numberOfSharesSubscribed integer required

    The subscriber must handwrite on the constitution the number of shares they will take — not less than one.

    range: 1–∞
  • nominalValuePerShare number optional

    In euro. Unlike other Irish company types, an LTD company's constitution is no longer required to state its total authorised share capital — it may instead simply state that the share capital, at registration, stands divided into shares of a fixed nominal amount. This field records that fixed amount when given.

    range: 0–∞

Constitution

  • constitutionType enum required

    standard_ltd_constitution = the CRO's standard downloadable one-document LTD constitution (Schedule 1, Companies Act 2014), completed and attached unamended; bespoke_constitution = a custom one-document constitution drafted by the applicant or their advisor, still required to comply with the Schedule 1 format and the Checklist for Constitution rules. An LTD company's constitution has no memorandum of association and states no objects, unlike every other Irish company type (out of scope of this document).

    enum: standard_ltd_constitution | bespoke_constitution
  • constitutionDocument file required

    The constitution must be signed by the subscriber(s), with their address and description stated, and their signature witnessed and dated; the subscriber must also handwrite the number of shares taken next to their signature. Uploaded as a PDF alongside Form A1 on CORE (maximum 8 MB per the CORE filing guidance).

  • subscriberSignatureWitnessName string required

    The witness to the subscriber's signature on the constitution cannot be an officer or subscriber of the company being formed.

    length: 1–160

Declaration and signatures

  • lawfulActivityDeclarationConfirmed boolean required

    Form A1 incorporates a declaration that the requirements of the Companies Act 2014 have been complied with, and as to the activity the company is being formed to engage in.

  • formA1WetSignatureConfirmed boolean required

    Form A1 requires original ('wet') signatures from the director(s), secretary, and subscriber(s), clearly legible and not digitally signed; the CRO returns forms signed digitally.

Version history

Independent and non-affiliated

GovSchema is an independent, open-source project. This reference is not produced, reviewed, or endorsed by Companies Registration Office or any government. The authoritative source is always the live government form and its official instructions.