Your Website Has to Show Your Company Registration Number

Open your own website in another tab and scroll to the footer. Read what is actually sitting down there.

Usually it is a copyright symbol, a year, and possibly a phone number. If you trade as a limited company, that is not enough. Section 151 of the Companies Act 2014 requires your website to display, in a prominent and easily accessible place, the name and legal form of your company, the place of registration and the number under which it is registered, and the address of the registered office. Three particulars. One footer. Missing from a very large share of the small business sites I end up looking at.

This is not a technicality dreamed up by a compliance consultant with time on their hands. It is the same obligation that has applied to letterheads and order forms for decades, extended to websites in plain language when the Act was rewritten in 2014. Nobody sends you a reminder about it. Nobody flags it during a website build. It simply sits there, unmet, until the day somebody checks.

The three particulars company law actually asks for

Subsection (2) of section 151 sets out what a company must carry on all its business letters and order forms:

1. The name and legal form of the company. Your full registered name, including the Limited, Teoranta, DAC or CLG that goes with it. Not your trading name on its own.
2. The place of registration and the registration number. In practice, a line reading "Registered in Ireland, company number" followed by your CRO number.
3. The address of the registered office. In full, as it appears on the register.

Subsection (4) is the part that catches people out. Where a company has a website, it must display those same particulars in a prominent and easily accessible place on that website ^[1]. The wording matters. Prominent rules out a line of six point grey text under a cookie banner. Easily accessible rules out burying the details in a PDF that opens in a new tab.

So what does that mean for you on an ordinary Tuesday? It means anyone who needs to confirm that the business quoting them is the same legal entity that will invoice them can do it in four seconds without ringing you. Banks do this. Insurers do this. So do procurement officers.

Consider a typical case, and it is one of the more expensive ways to learn this. A Louth scaffolding contractor puts in for a place on a public sector framework. The supplier vetting pack asks for the company registration number and the registered office, and whoever is scoring the submission does what everyone does now, which is open the website to cross-check. The site shows a trading name, a mobile number and a gallery. Nothing that ties the business to a legal entity. That does not automatically lose the tender. It does put a question mark beside a submission that was otherwise fine, at the exact moment you least want one.

Sole trader? Company law does not apply to you. E-commerce law does.

Now the part that surprises owners who assumed none of this was aimed at them.

If you are a sole trader or a partnership, section 151 is not aimed at you, because it applies to companies. The older rule that does apply, section 18 of the Registration of Business Names Act 1963, requires anyone trading under a registered business name to publish the true names of the people behind it on business letters, circulars and catalogues ^[2]. Websites are not mentioned, for the very good reason that they did not exist in 1963.

The obligation arrives from a different direction instead. The European Communities (Directive 2000/31/EC) Regulations 2003, the Irish implementation of the e-commerce directive, require a service provider to make the following easily, directly and permanently accessible ^[3]:

• The name of the service provider
• The geographic address at which they are established
• Contact details, including an email address, allowing them to be contacted rapidly and communicated with in a direct and effective manner
• Where they are entered in a trade or similar public register, that register and their registration number
• Where the activity is a regulated profession, the professional body, the professional title, and the applicable professional rules
• Where the activity is subject to VAT, the VAT registration number
• Prices indicated clearly and unambiguously, stating whether they include tax and delivery

Failure to comply is an offence under those regulations, prosecuted by the consumer protection authority rather than by the CRO.

Two honest caveats, because overstating this helps nobody. First, the regulations bite on information society services, meaning services normally provided at a distance by electronic means. If you sell online, take bookings, run ads or generate leads through the site, treat them as applying to you. A single static page with your opening hours is a greyer area, and your solicitor is better placed than I am to draw that line for your specific business. Second, a registered business name is entered in a public register at the CRO, so for most partnerships and sole traders trading under a name that is not their own, the register and number requirement is answerable in one line.

Partnerships sit in the same place, with one addition. Where a firm trades under a registered business name, the 1963 Act expects the true names of the partners to appear on business letters and circulars, so carrying them on the site as well costs nothing and closes the gap.

Your business structure	What the website has to identify	Where the rule comes from
Limited company	Registered name and legal form, place of registration and number, registered office address	Companies Act 2014, s.151(4)
Sole trader using a registered business name	Name, geographic address, rapid contact details, register and registration number, VAT number if registered	e-Commerce Regulations 2003, reg. 7
Partnership using a registered business name	As above, plus the true names of the partners on business letters and circulars	1963 Act s.18 and the 2003 Regulations

What it costs you when the details are not there

The statutory answer is straightforward. A company that defaults on section 151 commits a category 4 offence, which carries a class A fine of up to €5,000 on summary conviction ^[4].

The practical answer is more interesting, and I would rather give you that one. Prosecutions over a missing footer line are not what is filling the District Court. The cost lands somewhere else entirely, in the growing number of routine checks that now start with your website:

• Supplier and procurement vetting. Larger buyers verify legal identity before they onboard you. A site that cannot corroborate the details on your vetting form creates friction at the decision point.
• Payment and finance onboarding. Payment providers and lenders run know your customer checks against public information. Mismatches between your website, your invoices and the register generate queries, and queries generate delay.
• Ordinary customer trust. Google's own guidance on helpful content asks whether a visitor researching the site would come away trusting the business behind it, and points to clear information about who is publishing ^[5]. A business that will not say who it legally is reads as a business with something to be vague about.

I will admit to getting this wrong myself. Early on I told an owner who was fretting about their footer that it was cosmetic and to focus on the sales pages. It is not cosmetic, and I have not given that advice since.

Where the details should live

Sitewide footer. That is the answer for almost everyone, and it satisfies prominent and easily accessible in one move, because the footer renders on every page including the ones customers actually land on from Google.

Repeat them on your contact page, where people go looking. Then apply a bit of discipline to what you write:

• Use the registered name exactly as the CRO holds it, not a shortened version you prefer
• Give the registered office address in full, including Eircode
• Do not put the details in an image or a downloadable PDF, because neither is easily accessible and neither is readable by a screen reader
• Keep the address consistent with your Google Business Profile and your invoices, so nothing looks like a discrepancy to somebody checking

One genuine limitation worth knowing before you publish anything. Your registered office is already public information on the CRO register, but there is a difference between publicly filed and immediately findable. If you registered your home as the registered office, putting it in a sitewide footer means your home address is on a page indexed by search engines and scraped by every data broker going. That is a real tradeoff. The usual fix is a registered office service or an accountant's address, filed with the CRO first, then published. Company law requires the registered office. It does not require it to be your kitchen.

Getting your details onto your site in four steps

Confirm. Look up your own company or business name on the CRO register and write down exactly what it says, because your memory of the registered office is probably one address change out of date.

Draft. Write the block once, in plain text: registered name and legal form, "Registered in Ireland, company number", the number, the registered office address, and your VAT number if you are registered.

Deploy. Paste it into the footer widget so it renders sitewide, and add the same block to your contact page. In WordPress this is a two minute job in the block editor.

Verify. Load your own site on a phone, scroll to the bottom of three different pages, and confirm the text is legible rather than technically present at four pixels high.

Who genuinely does not need to make a project of this

If you are a sole trader working under your own name, selling nothing online, with a name, an address and an email address already visible on your contact page, you are broadly there. You do not need a compliance exercise. You need to check the email address still works.

And a fair point about platforms, since I spend my days comparing them. Editing a footer is not some WordPress superpower. Squarespace or Wix will let you drop these lines into a sitewide footer just as quickly, and if your entire operation is one page and a booking link, that will do the job. The difference shows up later, when the registered office changes, or a new obligation lands, or you want the same block reflected in your terms and your invoices. On a platform you fully control, you make the edit. On a site somebody else built and holds the keys to, you raise a change request and wait, at €75 to €150 an hour for what is genuinely ten minutes of typing.

That is the argument for owning the thing outright. Web60 takes a description of your business and builds a full WordPress site from it in about a minute, with hosting, SSL, nightly backups, security and Irish support all inside the one €60 a year. When you build the site yourself and keep full WordPress access from minute one, the footer is yours, the legal pages that sit alongside it are yours, and updating any of it costs you a coffee break rather than an invoice.

While you are in there, two related jobs are worth doing in the same sitting. Make sure your phone number is somewhere a customer can find it in one glance, and make sure your privacy notice reflects what you actually collect, because GDPR expectations for Irish business websites are a good deal more demanding than a cookie banner.

Conclusion

Your website is not only marketing. In law it is a publication of your business, and the state has an opinion about what it should say.

The good news is that this is one of the shortest to do items you will find. Three particulars if you are a company. A name, an address, a working email and a registration number if you are trading under a business name. Ten minutes in your footer, once, and then it is done and nobody has to think about it again.

Go and read your own footer. You will know within thirty seconds whether you have a job to do this week.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my website legally need to show my company registration number in Ireland?

If you trade as a limited company, yes. Section 151(4) of the Companies Act 2014 requires a company with a website to display the company name and legal form, the place of registration and registration number, and the registered office address in a prominent and easily accessible place on that website.

Where exactly should the company details appear on the site?

A sitewide footer is the simplest way to satisfy both prominent and easily accessible, because it renders on every page a visitor might land on. Repeating the same block on your contact page is good practice. Avoid putting the details only in an image or a PDF.

I am a sole trader. Do I have to display anything on my website?

Company law does not apply to you, but the e-Commerce Regulations 2003 do where you provide services online. They require your name, the geographic address where you are established, contact details including an email address for rapid contact, your entry and number in any public register such as a registered business name, and your VAT number if you are VAT registered.

What is the penalty for leaving the details off?

A company in default commits a category 4 offence under the Companies Act 2014, which carries a class A fine of up to €5,000 on summary conviction. In day to day terms, the more common cost is a failed supplier vetting check or a delay in payment provider onboarding.

Does the registered office address have to be my trading address?

No. The registered office is the address the CRO holds for official correspondence, and it can differ from where you actually trade. If you would rather not publish a home address, change the registered office with the CRO first, using an accountant or a registered office service, then publish the new address on the site.

Do I need to show my VAT number on my website?

If your activity is subject to VAT and you are registered, the e-Commerce Regulations require the VAT registration number to be accessible on the site. If you are not VAT registered, there is nothing to display.

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