IrelandPostal and Telecommunications Services Act 1983, Prohibition on Interception of Telecommunications Messages
Postal and Telecommunications Services Act 1983 s. 98, as amended by the Interception of Postal Packets and Telecommunications Messages (Regulation) Act 1993, s. 13
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
What follows is LexLint's own research summary of this law, not legal advice.
In force since .
An interception and recording consent rule binding public and private bodies.
As of .
What it requires
- Do not listen to, or record by any means, a telecommunications message in the course of its transmission unless either the person on whose behalf the message is sent or the person intended to receive it has consented to the listening or recording.
- If you are a party to a call, being the sender or the intended recipient, your own consent to your own recording of that call is enough to take the recording outside this offence; you do not need the other party's consent as well.
- Do not disclose the existence, substance or content of a message you know was intercepted without that consent, or use any information obtained from it.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
A person guilty of an offence under section 98 is liable, on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding 800 pounds or, at the court's discretion, to imprisonment for up to 12 months or both, or, on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding 50,000 pounds or, at the court's discretion, to imprisonment for up to 5 years or both; the court may also order forfeiture of anything used to commit the offence. The Act's published text states these amounts in Irish pounds.
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Prosecuted as an ordinary criminal offence; the Act names no dedicated regulator for section 98 itself.
What it reaches
Obligation class
Prohibition, Consent
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Section 98(1) makes it an offence to intercept, attempt to intercept, authorise or permit another person to intercept, or do anything that will enable interception of, a telecommunications message being transmitted by the telecommunications company, or to disclose or use information from a message so intercepted, subject to investigatory, ministerial-directed and operating-duty exceptions in section 98(2).
Section 13(3) of the Interception of Postal Packets and Telecommunications Messages (Regulation) Act 1993 substituted the section's definition of "intercept": listening to, or recording by any means, a telecommunications message in the course of its transmission, but the definition does not include such listening or recording where either the person on whose behalf the message is transmitted or the person intended to receive it has consented, so one party's own consent to its own recording of a call is enough to take that recording outside the offence.
Section 13(2) of the 1993 Act separately makes it an offence for a company employee to disclose information about a person's use of telecommunications services outside listed exceptions (the customer's own consent, crime prevention, a court order, State security, civil proceedings, or an internal duty to disclose), tightening how a company employee handles the same information the interception offence protects.
When LexLint raises it
records_conversationsprocesses_voice
Read the law
Irish Statute Book, official text of the Postal and Telecommunications Services Act 1983, section 98
Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.