The Irish UCITS Regulations — S.I. No. 352 of 2011
Ask the law
Ask a plain question about fund regulation. The answer is built only from the mined legal text, with every point cited to the exact Article — or an honest “not covered”. Not legal advice.
S.I. 352/2011 is Ireland's core UCITS law — the statutory instrument that transposes the EU UCITS Directive and sets the authorisation, investment and organisational rules for Irish UCITS. It is the direct Irish counterpart to Luxembourg's 2010 UCI Law. But the Irish framework is deliberately two-layer: this S.I. is the legislative base, and the Central Bank UCITS Regulations 2026 (S.I. 316/2026, which replaced the 2019 set) sit on top of it, adding the Central Bank's detailed operating conditions for UCITS, their management companies and their depositaries. Read one without the other and you have only half the rulebook.
Scope and the two-layer framework
The Regulations give effect in Ireland to the UCITS Directive (2009/65/EC). They define what a UCITS is and require it to be authorised. They also set the eligible-asset list, the diversification limits and the organisational duties that earn the EU retail marketing passport. The Central Bank of Ireland is the competent authority: it authorises each UCITS and its management company, and supervises both. The Irish feature is the split between two rule-making layers. The primary rules live in this transposing S.I. The operational detail, meaning the conditions the Central Bank imposes under its own powers, lives in the separate Central Bank UCITS Regulations 2026 (S.I. 316/2026, which replaced the 2019 set). The Central Bank made them under section 48(1) of the Central Bank (Supervision and Enforcement) Act 2013. An Irish UCITS may be a unit trust, a common contractual fund (CCF), a variable-capital investment company or an ICAV. The ICAV Act supplies a popular corporate vehicle. It is company law for the wrapper, not the UCITS rulebook.
Key provisions
| Provision | What it says | The practical point |
|---|---|---|
| Authorisation | No UCITS may carry on business in the State without Central Bank authorisation. The Bank authorises the fund, its management company and its trustee or depositary, and must decide within set time limits (Regulations 7 to 11). | Product-level authorisation is the gate. Build the Central Bank review runway into your launch timeline. |
| Legal forms | Unit trust, common contractual fund (CCF), variable-capital investment company, or ICAV; single fund or an umbrella with segregated-liability sub-funds (Regulation 67 treats each sub-fund as a separate UCITS). | Sub-fund segregation is statutory, not contractual — one umbrella can house several strategies without cross-liability, which is why the ICAV umbrella is the Irish workhorse. |
| Eligible assets | A UCITS may invest only in the permitted-investment list in Part 8 (Regulation 68) — transferable securities and money-market instruments, units of other UCIs, deposits and financial derivatives. | The list is exhaustive. An off-list holding (direct property, a physical commodity, an originated loan) forces the fund out of UCITS. |
| Diversification | The 5/10/40 issuer-concentration rule (Regulation 70). No more than 5% of assets may sit in one issuer. That rises to 10%, provided holdings above 5% do not together exceed 40%. Higher ceilings apply to government paper and index tracking. | 5/10/40 is the definitional heart of UCITS risk-spreading — the same rule as every other UCITS domicile, so a manager can passport a strategy across the EEA on one design. |
| Risk management | Regulation 69 requires a risk-management process covering all risks material to the UCITS, including global exposure from derivatives. | The RMP is a live, filed document — the Central Bank expects it to match what the fund actually does, not a template. |
| Management company & trustee | A UCITS must have an authorised management company (or be self-managed) and appoint a single Irish depositary/trustee; a company may not act as both. Depositary duties were tightened by UCITS V. | The depositary's oversight and strict asset-safekeeping liability is a real control; substance and segregation of roles are mandatory. |
| Cross-border marketing | Part 12 gives an Irish UCITS the passport to market into other Member States, and lets UCITS authorised elsewhere market into Ireland, on notification (Regulations 115–120). | The passport is the whole commercial point of choosing UCITS over an AIF for retail distribution. |
| Central Bank layer | The operational conditions (supervisory reporting, dealing, valuation, share-class and prospectus requirements) sit in the Central Bank UCITS Regulations 2026 (S.I. 316/2026), not in this S.I. | This S.I. alone is not the compliance manual. The day-to-day rulebook is the 2026 Regulations, which replaced the 2019 set in July 2026; read both together. |
Amendment history
| Date | Instrument | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Jul 2011 | S.I. 352/2011 | Transposed the UCITS IV Directive (2009/65/EC) — the base instrument for authorising and regulating Irish UCITS, replacing the earlier 2003 UCITS Regulations. No official consolidated text is published: read it with the amending S.I.s below. |
| 2016 | S.I. 143/2016 | Transposed UCITS V — reshaped the depositary regime (eligible entities, delegation, strict asset-safekeeping liability), and added remuneration and harmonised-sanctions requirements. |
| 13 Aug 2019 (made) | S.I. 430/2019 | Updated Regulations 3, 16, 21, 33, 37, 68, 100 and 138 and Schedule 5, including references to the MiFID II Regulations. |
| 6 Aug 2021 | S.I. 413/2021 | Gave effect to the cross-border distribution Directive (EU) 2019/1160: amended Regulations 3, 27 and 115–117, inserted Regulation 117A (de-notification of marketing arrangements) and deleted Regulation 97. |
| 12 Sep 2022 | S.I. 442/2022 | Gave effect to Delegated Directive (EU) 2021/1270 on sustainability risks for management companies. It amended Regulation 3 and Schedules 4, 5 and 9, and inserted Regulation 45A (an investment company integrates sustainability risks). |
| 1 Jan 2023 | S.I. 262/2022 | Gave effect to Directive (EU) 2021/2261: the PRIIPs key information document for UCITS. |
| 2019 | Central Bank UCITS Regulations 2019 (S.I. 230/2019) | Not an amendment to this S.I. — a separate, consolidated Central Bank rulebook made under the 2013 Act. Revoked in July 2026 by S.I. 316/2026 (Reg. 131). |
| 2026 | Central Bank UCITS Regulations 2026 (S.I. 316/2026) | Replaces the 2019 Regulations and their 2023 amendment as the Central Bank layer, signed 7 July 2026; savings for earlier directions and enforcement in Reg. 132. See the Central Bank UCITS Regulations page. |
| 1 May 2026 | S.I. 182/2026 | Gave effect to Directive (EU) 2024/927 (AIFMD II, which amended the UCITS Directive). It added liquidity management tools (new Regulation 28A) and a new Schedule 5A listing them. It also amended Regulations 3, 16 to 18, 23, 24, 34A, 42, 77, 99, 104 and 133, and substituted Schedule 11. Regulation 10 (new supervisory reporting, Regulation 30A) comes into operation on 16 April 2027. |
What it works with
The Irish UCITS Regulations are the Part-I-equivalent of Ireland's fund system, and are best read as one corner of a set. The governing EU instrument is the UCITS Directive. The operational detail is the Central Bank UCITS Regulations 2026. The corporate wrapper for most modern Irish UCITS is the ICAV. On the alternatives side, Ireland's non-UCITS funds run under the AIFMD regime and the Central Bank AIF Rulebook. The UCITS Regulations are to retail, passported funds what the AIF Rulebook is to qualifying-investor funds. Across borders, the closest comparator is Luxembourg's 2010 UCI Law. It holds both the UCITS and the non-UCITS retail regimes in one statute, where Ireland splits them across the S.I. and the Central Bank rulebook. The domicile comparison sets the two side by side.
In practice: the single most common Irish-UCITS mistake is treating S.I. 352/2011 as the whole rulebook. It is only the legislative base. The conditions a fund operates to (reporting, dealing, valuation, prospectus and share-class rules) live in the separate Central Bank UCITS Regulations 2026 (S.I. 316/2026, which replaced the 2019 set). The Central Bank updates that layer far more often than the transposing S.I. changes. The ICAV Act is not the UCITS law either. It provides a corporate vehicle, but a UCITS ICAV must still meet every requirement in these Regulations and in the Central Bank layer.
To verify
- The exact Regulation numbers for the higher government-paper and index-tracking ceilings and for the borrowing limit. This page cites Regulation 70 for the core 5/10/40 rule and Part 8 for permitted investments. Confirm the sub-regulation against the text before relying on a number.
Ask a question about this law
Get an article-cited answer built only from the mined legal text — or an honest “not covered”.
Ask the law →Changelog
3 changes to the law and guidance · latest 2026-07-07
- 2026-05-01 — S.I. 182/2026 came into operation, giving effect to the AIFMD II amendments to the UCITS Directive (liquidity management tools); its new supervisory-reporting Regulation 30A applies from 16 April 2027 (S.I. 182/2026, reg. 1).
- corrected: 2026-10-07 — The 2011 S.I. was described as a consolidated basis; no official consolidated text exists, and the amendment history now lists every amending S.I. from the Central Bank's UCITS legislation page.
- 2026-07-07 — The Central Bank UCITS Regulations 2019 (S.I. 230/2019) and their 2023 amendment (S.I. 565/2023) were revoked and replaced by the Central Bank UCITS Regulations 2026 (S.I. 316/2026, Reg. 131), signed 7 July 2026 and noticed in Iris Oifigiúil on 10 July 2026. The Central Bank layer this page refers to is now the 2026 Regulations.