As part of the EU’s anti-money laundering campaign it is now necessary for Sports Clubs to keep a register of who controls the assets of the Club and to file this with the Revenue.
This applies to all clubs that have trustees holding the assets of the Club on behalf of the members – in other words almost all sailing and yacht clubs. Failure to do this can result in prosecution with fines or imprisonment so this needs to be done and the register kept up to date as people holding positions change. Clubs that have formed a company are already covered under equivalent company law requirements.
What you need to do:
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Decide who controls the assets of the Club. This will certainly include the trustees and the officers. It will also usually include the committee members.
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Gather the following information on each of them:
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Full Name
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Residential Address
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Country of Residence
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Date of Birth
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PPS Number (or foreign equivalent if they live abroad)
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Date of appointment to their role
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Nature of their role (e.g. trustee or club officer or committee member)
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Assemble this information in a safe place and keep it up to date and permanently recorded.
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Check your club’s registration number as “an approved sporting body”. This is called a “GS number”. Sports clubs register for this with the Revenue in order not to have to pay income tax. You need this number to make the filing with the Revenue. You can check that your club is registered at: https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/documents/statistics/registrations/sports-bodies.pdf.
If you don’t know the Club’s GS number email the Revenue and they will tell you.
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Go onto the Revenue website and file the information at https://www.revenue.ie/en/crbot/index.aspx
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Keep the registration up to date with changes.
Who gets to see this information? Revenue, Gardai, anti-money laundering authorities.
What is the relevant law? S.I. No. 194/2021, the European Union (Anti-Money Laundering: Beneficial Ownership of Trusts) Regulations 2021. These Regulations, amended twice in 2025 and again only recently in July 2026 transpose a series of EU legal measures combating money laundering and terrorist financing, as they apply to trusts.
The relevant EU legal measures require that beneficial (i.e. ‘real’ ownership) of legal entities (trusts and companies) should be collected by the authorities in EU member states. Club officials may have come across this in their work in relation to companies, where there is a central register of beneficial ownership of companies. In that register holds the names of shareholders with more than 25% of the shares or control of the company. Where there are no such shareholders, then the names of all the directors and senior executives are entered. Until 2022 this register was open to the public until a GDPR-type legal action closed it down. It is now available for inspection by a limited class of persons.
In any event, in relation to trusts, the requirement, as it applies to not-for-profit sports clubs, is for the names of the governing body to be entered on the register. Regulation 3(4) is the relevant regulation:
“Notwithstanding paragraph (3), “beneficial owner”, in relation to a relevant trust established for the purpose of holding any assets of an approved body of persons established for, and existing for, the sole purpose of promoting amateur games or amateur sports within the meaning of section 235 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 (No. 39 of 1997), means the trustees, the committee or other governing body of the club or association, and any other individual who has control over the relevant trust.”
Has this anything to do with the Registration of Clubs Act procedure that a Club deals with each year in relation to supply of intoxicating liquor? No.
Why does it apply to your club? It is because there is a trust arrangement in place whereby assets of the club which (in legal theory) at any time belong to the members of the club at that time, are held by trustees and trusts are caught by the underlying EU legal measure. What the law is chasing is trusts being used to hide money, not voluntary organisations but unfortunately clubs are caught by it.