Website blocking in Ireland happens through the courts. The best-known case is football: since 2019 the Premier League has held a court order requiring eir, Virgin Media, Sky and Vodafone to block illegal live streams of its matches, and in July 2025 the Commercial Court extended it to the 2025/26 and 2026/27 seasons, finding it reasonable and proportionate.
Data retention changed in 2023. In April 2022 the EU Court of Justice confirmed that Ireland's 2011 retention law did not comply with EU law, and a 2022 amendment act, in force since 26 June 2023, replaced the rules. Providers must keep subscriber details and records of which IP address was assigned to whom for a year. Traffic and location data, which shows who contacted whom, when and from where, can be kept for everyone only to protect state security, with a High Court judge's approval and for 12 months at a time; the Minister for Justice obtained such orders in June 2023 and June 2024. In individual cases involving serious crime or state security, the Gardaí can ask a District Court judge to order a provider to preserve or hand over data.
Interception is the next change. In January 2026 the government approved the outline of the Communications (Interception and Lawful Access) Bill, which would replace a 1993 law, cover communications 'whether encrypted or not' and include rules for police use of spyware. It is not law yet. In April 2026 the Independent Examiner of Security Legislation recommended lawful access to encrypted messages, with a role for judges and what he called clear and robust safeguards.
Ireland also matters for privacy well beyond its borders. Many large tech companies have their EU headquarters there, so the Data Protection Commission leads many of the EU's biggest GDPR cases; in 2023 its fines made up 87 percent of all GDPR fines issued by EU data protection authorities. It fined Meta 1.2 billion euros in May 2023 over transfers of EU users' data to the US, and TikTok 530 million euros in May 2025 because European users' data could be accessed by staff in China without equivalent protection.
GhostShield runs a server in Dublin. It gives you an Irish IP address when you are abroad and a short route for people in Ireland. It uses standard WireGuard.
International Privacy Standards
Internet freedom varies significantly by country. Organizations like Freedom House track global internet freedom annually, while the EU's GDPR has set new standards for data protection worldwide. Reporters Without Borders monitors press freedom and digital access restrictions globally.
A VPN helps you maintain consistent privacy protections regardless of which country you're browsing from, ensuring your data stays encrypted and your activity stays private.
The privacy landscape in Ireland
Ireland is not one of the 14 countries of SIGINT Seniors Europe, the intelligence-sharing group known as the Fourteen Eyes. That does not put Irish data out of reach: providers keep a year of subscriber and IP address records, and the court orders of 2023 and 2024 required a year of traffic and location data to be kept for state security.
The interception bill is the change to watch. As outlined in January 2026, it would give the police powers over communications whether encrypted or not, including the use of spyware. A VPN encrypts the link between your device and the VPN server; it does not protect a phone that has spyware on it, and it does not change what a messaging service can be ordered to hand over.
Day to day, the risks are scams, phishing and public Wi-Fi, as anywhere. A WireGuard tunnel keeps the Wi-Fi network from seeing your logins, but it does not stop a convincing fake login page.
Top reasons people use a VPN in Ireland
For Irish people abroad, the usual question is RTÉ Player. RTÉ has said its player checks your IP address and blocks rights-restricted programmes when you are not on the island of Ireland, because its rights agreements cover only that territory. An address from the Dublin server is an Irish one, but streaming services can also refuse addresses they recognise as VPNs, so try the ones you use during the 7-day free trial.
At home, a VPN keeps the sites and services you reach away from your provider, which already keeps a year of records on who held which IP address. It also protects logins on public Wi-Fi in cafes, hotels and airports.
For an address outside Ireland, GhostShield has 20 locations in 16 countries. The nearest are London, Gravelines and Paris in France, and Amsterdam.