EU Political Advertising Transparency in Ireland

The EU has a regulation 2024/900 that political advertising services need to publish details of political ads they create and their targeting. Transparency & Targeting of Political Advertising Regulation or TTPA. As far as I understand the onus is on the political advertising services to publish the transparency notices but Irish political parties or 'sponsors' have begun to publish Transparency Notices as the EU parliament has not yet created a repository for EU political ads.

(64) To ensure the publication of the information about online political advertising required under this Regulation, and effective access to it by all interested individuals, it is necessary that the Commission should establish and ensure, directly or by entrusting this responsibility to a management authority, the management of a public repository for all online political advertisements, the European repository for online political advertisements.

The big social media companies Meta and Google have chosen not to the follow the EU regulations because they claim they are too onerous so since Octoer 2024 they aren’t taking political ads and TikTok says it never took political ads (directly). The political advertising transparency law equaly applies to physical ads, posters, leafets, 'swag' etc.

I only discovered these Transparency Notices by chance as there is a by-election occuring in 2 Irish parliamentary constituences at the moment, I can't find anyone outside those directly involved, having made known these Transparency Notices were being published. As soon as I found most of the Irish Political Parties I tried to tell every journalist and digital transparency researcher I knew. Liz Carolan of Digital Action on her newsletter The Briefing quickly began analysising, highlighting and explaining the data as well as speaking with the parties and the media in a more professional way then I can.

We finally know how much money shapes Irish elections Irish Times - 20 May 2026.
How you can monitor what candidates are spending on the by-elections RTE - News At One - 20 May 2026.
The Journal also analyised the data but strangely didn't explicity mention that no large social media company is taking political ads at the moment and thats way there is almost zero digital spending in these by-elections.

All the political parties represented in the Irish Parliament have begun to publish transparency notices in regard to their mostly physical ad purchases. Its not beyond any Independent political candidate to publish list of Transparency Notices but almost none have so far and the Irish Electoral Commission is not forcing them to.

Irish Political Parties

https://transparency.finegael.ie/
https://labour.ie/transparency/
https://transparency.fiannafail.ie/
https://sinnfein.ie/transparency/
https://www.socialdemocrats.ie/transparency/
https://www.greenparty.ie/transparency
https://aontu.ie/transparency/
https://www.independentireland.ie/transparency
https://www.pbp.ie/transparency/

By-election candidates

I found 2 no others
https://www.garrityforgalway.ie/transparency/
https://www.irishpeople.org/transparency

Newspaper/Advertising Groups are also publishing Transparecy Notices, there one I've found so far are,

https://www.jcdecaux.ie/transparency
https://www.mediahuis.ie/menu-legal/ttpa/
https://agrilandmedia.ie/agriland-media-ttpa/
https://pages.farmersjournal.ie/ttpa/
https://clarechampion.ie/wp-content/uploads/

One could use https://www.mediaownership.ie/ to search for more.

I searched for Irish MEPs publishing Transparency Notices only found 3 so far, they could be using their parties TTPA page.

https://cynthianimhurchu.ie/transparency-notice/
https://lynnboylan.ie
https://ninacarberrymep.com/transparency/
https://www.barryandrews.ie
https://www.reginadoherty.com/
Luke 'Ming' Flanagan
Kathleen Funchion
https://billykelleher.ie
http://www.ciaranmullooly.com/
https://seankelly.eu
https://www.aodhan.ie
https://mariawalsh.eu/transparencynotice/

Barry Cowen
https://michaelmcnamaratd.com

I also search for Transparency Notices for European Parliament Political Groups and Parties. None have and I can't even find any companies that have posted Transparency Notices for ads those party or groups have sponored.

Commercial repositories platforms The Taurus Expanse UG & Co. KG - Munich, Germany · EU-hosted
Politicaladvertising.eu SMIT. Digitaal vakmanschap
Polads.euSTEP Network
Adfairly.eu/ Teamfluence OÜ, Tallinn, Estonia
TTPA check.eu Teamfluence

Will there be a EU repository by the time of our presumed next election to be held no later then 2030

Electoral Commission has a useful seminar video and powerpoint on TTPA.
Irish Media and Online Regulator
Data Protection Commission

European Union (Political Advertising) Regulations 2025Repeals https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2022/en/act/pub/0030/sec0119.html#part4

Irish Times saying US was transporting personal weapons of troops who were not on the plane?

Rising number of foreign troops passing through Ireland Jun 6, 2019, 03:00
Craig Hughes, Pat Leahy

I downloaded the second Tableau Public charting software workbook and exported the .csv "Path of foreign troops through Ireland". It seemed strange that there were many records that described "personal weapons for troops" but the same row listed 0 troops, the data was saying it was transporting personal weapons of troops who were not on the plane? That not how it works as far as I know.



Shannonwatch had previously FOI'd similar info and had a file of flights from 2014/2015.

So I compared flight CMB502 in 2015 which is listed in both files. The earlier FOI says there was 226 troops on that flight.




Craig Hughes tweeted me a screenshot of the data he has...

Here's a screen shot of that reference number from the raw data I received from the Dept, as you can see troops is blank, so an error in digitising (accidentally or intentionally?!) pic.twitter.com/4y1k8TSlHd

— Craig Hughes (@hughescraig90) June 16, 2019

The journalist has already acknowledge (on twitter) that there may be a problem with the information that the department supplied, but if the data is incorrect then perhaps the article needs to be reviewed. I also sent this query to Shannonwatch to see if they thought that there is a problem the data given to the Irish Times.