Ireland (2017 eInvoicing Country Sheet)

Legislation

In Ireland, there is no legislation in place specifically relating to the support for, or provision of, electronic invoicing (eInvoicing) in the Public Sector.

Electronic invoices in B2G public procurement are supported and provided for on a voluntary basis by each Contracting Authority or Sector.

The transposition of 2010/45/EU Directive into Irish Law is set out in the Statutory Instrument 354 published in 2012 and which came into effect from 1 January, 2013. This established electronic invoices on an equal footing with paper invoices and incorporates the definition of an electronic invoice's processing, such as the appropriate application of business control to ensure authenticity, integrity and a reliable audit trail of the electronic document. Apart from this, there is no other existing national legislation specifically relating to eInvoicing. eInvoicing is aligned with the principles of Ireland's eGovernment Strategy 2017-2020.

eInvoicing platform and eInvoicing management solutions

The Irish government does not legislate for the use of any eInvoicing platform.

There are a number of eInvoicing initiatives and solutions across the Irish public sector which are aimed at addressing the business needs of a lead contracting authority or of a specific group of contracting authorities within a Sector but there has not been a national eInvoicing architecture or model for B2G transactions per se. eInvoicing solutions in place have been established in conjunction with Service Providers.

Generally, the eInvoicing solutions provide an interface to the Contracting Authority’s main invoice processing system. Where solutions are in place, the concerned Contracting Authorities are capable of receiving eInvoices in one or more standards, such as EDIFACT, UBL and PEPPOL-BIS through a range of transport channels, including email, PEPPOL and online portals. In some cases, eInvoices are also received as PDF files via email.

As part of the plans to comply with the eInvoicing Directive (2014/55/EU), Ireland is planning to adopt PEPPOL for the transport infrastructure and the European Standard for Electronic Invoicing for the messaging data model and syntaxes. Existing solutions can remain in use but all contracting authorities will be expected to arrange access to or establish an eInvoicing capability that supports both PEPPOL and the European eInvoicing Standard.

Approach for receiving and processing eInvoices

The current level of eInvoicing capabilities and approach for receiving and processing eInvoices varies across contracting authorities and sectors. Some contracting authorities have advanced standards based, automated and integrated systems while others process invoices in both manual and semi-automated ways.

As part of Ireland's plans to comply with the eInvoicing Directive (2014/55/EU), PEPPOL will be adopted for the transport infrastructure and the '4 corner model' that PEPPOL supports will allow each Sector or group of contracting authorities and each economic operator choose their own service providers and solution that best fits their requirements, once they comply with the PEPPOL and EU eInvoicing Standards.

It is expected that financial management shared services systems and/or leads, within key Sectors (Health, Education, Central, Local) will be the main implementation points for establishing Sector level eInvoicing solutions that comply with the Directive and the national approach.

Typically, the shared reception point would be connected with an invoice processing systems shared services centre that would also carry out the post-reception validation, processing and payment functions.

Additional information

The Office of Government Procurement (OGP) will be responsible for the transposition of the eInvoicing Directive (2014/55/EU) into Irish Law and has established an eInvoicing Programme to:

a)      Communicate the obligations of the Directive and a national implementation model

and

b)      Establish a framework for the procurement of a set of commercially available solutions for Public Sector Bodies (PSBs) to use in achieving compliance and additional benefits.

The National eInvoicing Programme will be engaging with a wide range of stakeholders in the eInvoicing domain to raise awareness of the Directive, the objectives of the Programme and to develop a procurement framework to facilitate and enable all PSBs establish eInvoicing capabilities to meet their obligations under the Directive.

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Last updated:  Nov 29, 2017 17:08