INTRODUCTION
Since the seminal House of Lords decision in Salomon v A Salomon & Co Ltd, the corporate veil has been a ‘fundamental principle of Irish company law’, and while Hutchinson and Keane assert that ‘company’ has no defined legal meaning in Irish law, it is colloquially taken to refer ‘specifically to a form of business enterprise the members of which enjoy limited liability’. Consequently, Irish courts have consistently deemed piercing the veil of incorporation a measure of exceptional and limited resort. The judiciary’s notable reluctance to exercise discretion in this area is understandable when one considers the fundamental benefit of incorporation as being the limitation of liability. Unfortunately, as a result of this concept often being mistakenly conflated with a different feature of the corporate entity, the separation of corporate assets, it is by no means an unfair criticism to say that the act of corporate veil piercing has developed in a haphazard and often contradictory way in Irish courts, marked by confusion and inconsistency …
€ (Westlaw)
Andreena Corrigan, ‘A Salomon-Friendly Solution: The Case for Reverse Piercing of the Corporate Veil in Irish Courts’ (2025) 24 Hibernian Law Journal 1-25.
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