Copyright and Related Rights (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
============================================================

Niamh Smyth (FF), Cavan-Monaghan

I thank the Deputy for these amendments; however, they go beyond the scope of this Bill. They seek to amend the Copyright and Related Rights Act to state which collective management organisation has the ultimate decision-making authority as to how equitable remuneration is divided among either performers or producers. This extends beyond the scope of the Bill. This matter was the subject of a long, but now concluded, court case, and the Bill does not seek to address this.
The amendments make reference to the collective rights management directive. I assure the Deputy that this directive applies in Ireland. It was transposed by the CRM regulations of 2016. These regulations set out the rules that must be followed by collective management organisations registered with the Intellectual Property Office of Ireland, IPOI. These rules are not optional; they are the law. Each year, every CMO must submit a detailed dossier on its membership, finances, rules of procedure and so on, and these are examined by the Intellectual Property Office of Ireland. The regulations also establish clear rules on transparency of any deductions made.
The CRM directive already requires CMOs to take steps to ensure that rights-holders who do not come forward to collect their remuneration are sought out, and the information on unclaimed amounts is made publicly available. Where there is any doubt on this, the IPOI has powers to request further information. The Copyright and Related Rights Act provides the IPOI with power to deregister any CMO that is found to be non-compliant. As I have stated previously, the law is clear that it is up to an individual rights-holder to choose to assign their rights to a CMO of their choice, or not to, as the case may be.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-21