Ireland's Courts Set Generative AI Rules for Court Documents

Ireland: Generative AI Practice Directions Now in Force for High Court and Court of Appeal Documents

Practice Directions HC142 and CA16 came into operation on 1 September 2026. They require anyone responsible for a civil court document in Ireland's High Court or Court of Appeal to independently verify generative AI output, and to declare in affidavits and expert reports that AI did not generate the substance.

Information last verified on September 5, 2026.

Status: In force. HC142 was issued by Mr Justice David Barniville, President of the High Court, and is dated 29 July 2026. CA16 was issued by Ms Justice Caroline Costello, President of the Court of Appeal, and is dated 11 August 2026. The Courts Service published the announcement on 31 August 2026, and both directions came into operation on 1 September 2026 (para. 5 of each). Each direction states at para. 42 that it will be kept under regular review and may be amended from time to time.

Jurisdiction scope: This covers civil proceedings before the High Court of Ireland and the Court of Appeal. It does not cover criminal proceedings, the Circuit Court, the District Court or the Supreme Court, none of which are named in either direction or in the Courts Service announcement. It has no application in Northern Ireland, in England and Wales, or in any court outside Ireland.

What Happened

On 31 August 2026 the Courts Service of Ireland announced that the President of the Court of Appeal and the President of the High Court had each issued a practice direction on the responsible use of generative artificial intelligence in court documents. The announcement encouraged practitioners and litigants to familiarise themselves with the directions and ensure full adherence to the relevant provisions "in order to avoid potential adverse consequences", and linked to the two texts: CA16 for the Court of Appeal and HC142 for the High Court.

Each direction recites three sources of authority: the general authority of the President of the court concerned, the inherent power of that court to regulate its own procedures, and s. 11(12) and (13) of the Civil Law and Criminal Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2020.

The two texts run to 42 numbered paragraphs each and use the same numbering, so a paragraph reference points to the same provision in both. The substantive differences are narrow: para. 4 defines "the Court" as the High Court in HC142 and as the Court of Appeal in CA16, and CA16 adds a sentence at para. 1 stating that it "aligns with the Practice Direction issued by the President of the High Court on 29 July 2026 thereby ensuring that its provisions continue to apply to any appeal from the High Court to the Court of Appeal."

The operative obligation sits at para. 12:

"Any person responsible for a Court Document, including a party, legal practitioner, deponent, witness, expert or any other person, must ensure that any material generated wholly or partly with the assistance of a GenAI Tool has been appropriately and independently verified before it is used in proceedings. Any limitation on the ability to do so must be disclosed to the Court." Source: HC142 and CA16, para. 12

Para. 13 closes the obvious shortcut, while leaving one route open:

"It is not sufficient to use the same or other GenAI Tools to confirm that information is accurate. However, persons responsible for a Court Document may verify GenAI content by referring to original source material housed within a GenAI Tool." Source: HC142 and CA16, para. 13

Para. 18 sets out what verification means in practice. It opens by saying that content produced using GenAI "must be verified under human control and supervision", then lists what court users should do: fact-check and proofread, edit and adapt content to the circumstances of the case, and "verify that any references to case law, legislation, textbooks or articles exist and stand for the legal propositions attributed to them", with extracts and quotes verified as accurate and correctly attributed. Para. 19 adds that fabricated, manipulated or "deep fake" material "must never be used or presented to the Court".

Underlying all of it is para. 9: "All court users are responsible for the content of their Court Documents notwithstanding the use of any GenAI Tool."

What the Law Actually Says

A practice direction is not a statute. It is a procedural direction issued by the President of a court, governing how proceedings before that court are conducted. Neither CA16 nor HC142 amends the Rules of the Superior Courts, and neither creates a cause of action. What they do is set an expectation that the court can enforce through its ordinary powers over costs, over the admission of documents and over case management, and, for solicitors and barristers, through the regulatory system.

Who is bound. Para. 3(b) applies each direction to "all persons involved in proceedings before the Court, including parties, legal practitioners, witnesses, experts and any third party required by the Court to produce documents". Para. 38 removes any doubt: "For the avoidance of doubt, this Practice Direction also applies to litigants in person." Para. 40 says litigants in person "are subject to the same obligations of accuracy and candour as represented parties", and para. 41 makes the sanctions in paras. 35 to 37 available against a self-represented party whose documents contain inaccurate references or references to non-existent sources generated by GenAI use. Anyone running their own High Court case is inside the scope, whether or not they qualify for civil legal aid in Ireland.

What counts as a court document. Para. 3(a) covers "all documents used in civil proceedings, including pleadings, submissions, affidavits, witness statements and expert reports". The direction applies to proceedings instituted before or after commencement (para. 3(c)) and to all court documents prepared, produced or generated after 1 September 2026 (para. 3(d)). So an existing case is not grandfathered; only documents already produced before that date sit outside.

Disclosure is not automatic. Para. 22 provides that, subject to the specific requirements for evidence documents, "the use of GenAI Tools in the preparation of a Court Document does not of itself require disclosure". Para. 21 is the counterweight: where directed by the Court, a party or other person must disclose whether GenAI tools were used and, if so, the nature and extent of that use, and everyone is expected to be in a position to answer that question if asked.

Declarations are in the negative. For affidavits and witness statements, para. 27 requires that, unless the Court otherwise directs, the person making the statement or swearing the affidavit include a declaration in one of the opening paragraphs, in this form, amended or adapted as appropriate:

"I declare that Generative Artificial Intelligence has not been used for the purposes of generating the substantive content of this [witness statement/affidavit] (including by way or altering, embellishing, strengthening, diluting or rephrasing the evidence set out) and that this [witness statement/affidavit] reflects my personal knowledge, recollection and evidence." Source: HC142 and CA16, para. 27

Para. 28 clarifies that administrative or ancillary use such as formatting or spell-checking does not prevent that declaration being made. Expert reports carry a parallel declaration under para. 29, and where GenAI has been used the expert must disclose the nature and extent of that use so the Court and the parties can assess the reliability, independence and evidential weight of the opinion (paras. 30 and 31).

Correcting a problem is itself an obligation. Under para. 33, a party who spots a potential issue in another party's documents should raise it with that party first and, absent an appropriate response within a reasonable period, bring it to the Court. Under para. 34, a party who identifies or is told of an accuracy problem in its own documents should notify the other parties and the Court without delay, explain the issue, supply clean and marked-up replacements, and bear the costs of that exercise unless the Court orders otherwise.

Consequences, as the text frames them. Para. 35 says parties who fail to comply "may be subject to sanctions including (but not limited to) adverse cost orders, orders disregarding or rejecting Court Documents in whole or in part, or the striking out of their claim or defence (where appropriate)". Para. 36 says practitioners who fail to comply, for example by citing non-existent sources or inaccurately referencing genuine ones, or by failing to promptly remedy an issue where necessary, "may be the subject of a referral to the Legal Services Regulatory Authority under the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 (as amended) or their professional body and/or costs orders may be made against them personally". Para. 37 allows the Court to take misuse into account in case management and costs. Every one of those is permissive. Nothing in the text makes any sanction automatic.

The referral route in para. 36 connects to a standing complaints regime. Under s. 51(2) of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015, any person may complain to the Legal Services Regulatory Authority where they consider that an act or omission of a legal practitioner constitutes misconduct, and s. 51(1) covers clients complaining about inadequate services or excessive costs.

The Courts Service has also published separate plain-language guidance, "Using AI to prepare documents for court", aimed at anyone using AI tools in connection with proceedings, including people representing themselves. Para. 39 of each direction points litigants in person to it. It repeats the core message that AI chatbots "are not qualified lawyers and do not provide reliable or tailored legal advice", and warns that some tools may use information "that is out of date or not relevant to Irish law or the Irish courts".

For readers whose disputes sit outside these two courts, the directions do not reach them. A claim run through the District Court small claims procedure is not governed by CA16 or HC142, nor is a complaint to the Data Protection Commission, nor an employment complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission. A defamation action begun in the High Court, on the other hand, is squarely within scope, so anyone preparing the affidavits involved in bringing a defamation claim at that level now has a declaration to make.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The design choice worth noticing is that these directions do not regulate AI use. They regulate accuracy, and they allocate responsibility for it. Para. 22 declines to require routine disclosure, para. 6 acknowledges that GenAI tools "may assist in the efficient conduct of litigation, including by reducing costs and enhancing access to justice", and para. 28 explicitly protects mundane uses like formatting. What the directions insist on instead is the thing that failed in the hallucinated-citation cases that made this an international judicial concern: a human who has actually opened the authority.

Para. 13 is the sharpest provision, because it names a specific failure pattern rather than a technology. Asking a chatbot whether its own output is accurate is a check that reliably returns reassurance, and para. 10(c) of the same direction says as much, listing among the known risks that outputs "may incorrectly assert, when asked, that information is accurate when it is not". The carve-out in the second sentence of para. 13, allowing verification by reference to original source material housed within a GenAI tool, is what keeps modern legal research platforms usable.

The declarations at paras. 27 and 29 are drafted as denials rather than disclosures, and that is a meaningful difference. A disclosure regime asks the maker to describe their process; a negative declaration asks them to swear that a category of assistance was not used for substance. Deponents and experts should read the parenthetical carefully, because it reaches beyond drafting to "altering, embellishing, strengthening, diluting or rephrasing the evidence set out". Tidying a witness's own words with an AI tool is not obviously outside that language.

The reach to litigants in person at paras. 38 to 41 is the provision our readers should sit with longest. Self-represented parties are the population most likely to turn to a free chatbot for legal research and least likely to have access to a citator to check what it produces. The directions respond to that not with a lower standard but with the same standard plus signposting, telling litigants in person to verify against reliable and authoritative sources such as the Courts Service, the Law Reform Commission or other reputable official websites (para. 40).

One point of construction is worth recording without overstating it. The statutory provision the directions cite, s. 11(12) and (13) of the Civil Law and Criminal Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2020, sits in a chapter of that Act headed "Remote hearing of civil proceedings", and s. 11(17) defines "relevant proceedings" for that section as proceedings that are the subject of a remote-hearing direction under s. 11(1) or (2). Both directions cite that provision alongside the general authority of the President and the inherent power of the court to regulate its own procedures. Our reading is that it is those latter two sources that do the work for documents in ordinary in-person litigation. We make no claim that either direction is invalid, and no court has been shown to have considered the point.

How This Affects You

If you are preparing any document for a civil case in the Irish High Court or the Court of Appeal after 1 September 2026, and you used a generative AI tool at any stage, the practical steps the text asks for are concrete. Pull the actual text of every case, statutory provision, textbook passage or article cited, confirm it exists, confirm it says what your document says it says, and confirm any quoted extract is accurate and correctly attributed (para. 18). If you are swearing an affidavit or making a witness statement, include the para. 27 declaration in one of the opening paragraphs. If you are an expert, include the para. 29 declaration at the start of your report and disclose any use that touched substance. If you find an error after filing, para. 34 asks you to raise it promptly rather than wait to be caught, and it contemplates that you will bear the costs of fixing it.

If you are not sure whether an obligation applies to your document, para. 21 is a useful test: you are expected to be able to tell the Court whether you used a GenAI tool and how, if the Court asks.

More background on how the Irish court and complaints systems fit together sits across our Ireland legal guides.

What Happens Next

Both directions are already operative, so the next developments are administrative rather than procedural. Para. 42 of each commits the court to keeping its approach under regular review, given how quickly the underlying technology changes, and says the directions may be amended or adapted from time to time.

The non-lawyer guidance is the one moving part visible in the texts themselves. HC142 para. 39 refers litigants in person to guidance available on the Courts Service website, while CA16 para. 39, signed roughly two weeks later, said it "will be made available on the Courts Service website shortly". As of 5 September 2026, that guidance is published at courts.ie under the title "Using AI to prepare documents for court".

The Courts Service announcement names only the Court of Appeal and the High Court. We are not aware of equivalent directions issued for other Irish courts as of 5 September 2026, and we make no prediction about whether any will follow. How the paras. 35 to 37 sanctions are applied will only become visible as reserved judgments and costs rulings that engage the directions are delivered.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It describes Practice Directions CA16 and HC142 as they applied to civil proceedings in the Irish Court of Appeal and High Court, verified against the published texts on courts.ie on 5 September 2026. Practice directions can be amended, and para. 42 of each says they will be kept under review. For advice on your own proceedings, consult a solicitor qualified in Ireland.

Related articles

• Ireland legal guides hub
• Civil legal aid in Ireland
• Making a defamation claim in Ireland
• The small claims procedure
• Making a complaint to the Data Protection Commission

Last updated: 2026-09-05. Details verified as of 2026-09-05.