The development of a Classified List of Legislation in Ireland arises from the Commission’s general statutory mandate to keep the law under review and also from the Commission’s participation in the eLegislation Group, chaired by the Department of the Taoiseach. It complements the Commission’s work on Statute Law Restatement and the Legislation Directory, and can also be seen in the wider context of Better Regulation principles, as discussed in the 2010 OECD Report Better Regulation in Europe: Ireland, available at www.betterregulation.ie.

In September 2010, the Department of the Taoiseach (on behalf of the eLegislation Group and the Commission) circulated an initial draft Classified List of Extant Post-1922 Acts in Force in Ireland to all Government Departments. Each Department’s reply made important corrections to the draft List, notably by identifying any errors in the assignment of Acts and as to the appropriate heading under which Acts were listed. After this process was completed, in early December 2010 the Commission placed the amended draft Classified List of Extant Post-1922 Acts in Force in Ireland on this website.

The Commission followed this process by publishing a Consultation Paper on a Classified List of Legislation in Ireland (LRC CP 62-2010), which placed this initial process of developing a Classified List in a wider national and comparative setting. In particular, the Consultation Paper notes that classified lists of legislation, or legislative codes as they are often called, have been developed in other States, notably at both federal and state level in the United States of America. Building on the draft classified list of post-1922 Acts, the Commission included a second version of the Classified List in the Consultation Paper and added over 100 pre-1922 Acts (derived from the definitive list of pre-1922 Acts that remain in force, as set out in the Statute Law Revision Act 2007), resulting in a total list of over 2,000 Acts. The Consultation Paper provisionally recommended that a complete Classified List of Legislation (which would include all pre-1922 and post-1922 Acts) should be developed. The Commission intends to publish a Report on the Classified List of Legislation in Ireland by the end of 2011 or early 2012.

In the meantime, the Commission is committed to updating on a regular basis the Classified List. Version 4 of the Classified List of Legislation in Ireland, takes account of: (a) all Acts of the Oireachtas enacted to Act No.25 of 2011, European Financial Stability Facility and Euro Area Loan Facility (Amendment) Act 2011 (signed into law by the President on 23 September 2011); and (b) the changes in Departmental names and their responsibilities made to 8 September 2011.