.ie is the

country code top-level domain A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all tw ...

(ccTLD) which corresponds with the

ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to represent countries, dependent territories, and special ...

code for

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

. The

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, Autonomous system (Internet), autonomous system number allocation, DNS root zone, root zone management in the Domain Name Syste ...

(IANA) list the Computing Services Computer Centre of

University College Dublin University College Dublin (), commonly referred to as UCD, is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland. With 38,417 students, it is Ireland's largest ...

as its sponsoring organisation for the .ie domain. Since 2000 the business of administrating the domain registry has been handled by IE Domain Registry Limited. Domain name registration is open to individuals located in, or with a significant connection with, any part of the

island of Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially named Irelanda sovereign state covering five-sixths of th ...

History

.ie was registered on 27 January 1988 and a year later the registration of .ie domain names was delegated by

Jon Postel Jonathan Bruce Postel (; August 6, 1943 – October 16, 1998) was an American computer scientist who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly with respect to Internet Standard, standards. He is known p ...

to the Computing Services Computer Centre of

, then headed by Dennis Jennings. In 2000, the administration of the .ie domain was sub-delegated by UCD to a new company, IE Domain Registry Limited. The Computing Services Computer Centre of University College Dublin remains the

's sponsoring organisation for the .ie domain.

State regulation

In 2000, the Oireachtas (bicameral parliament of Ireland) enacted a law giving the Minister for Public Enterprise the power to make regulations regarding the registration of .ie domain names. In 2007 this power was transferred to the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg).

Registration policy

The IEDR is considered more conservative than other similar authorities and places certain restrictions on registration. The .ie ccTLD is primarily a business orientated ccTLD for Irish businesses and businesses doing business in or with Ireland. It has allowed personal domain name (PDN) registrations, though these would only account for approximately 1% of the number of .ie domain registrations. An individual is allowed to register their own name or a variant of it with a utilities bill or passport as proof of entitlement. Registration policies have been liberalised somewhat in recent years and rules such as the one against registering generic domain names have been dropped. The .ie ccTLD is a managed ccTLD where applicants for .ie domain names have to provide proof of entitlement to the domain that they want to register. In August 2017 IEDR began a consultation on removing this restriction and allowing first-come first-served registration; the requirement of a connection to Ireland will remain. Registration is restricted to entities with a connection to Ireland. Thus, American singer

Melanie Melanie is a feminine given name derived from the Greek language, Greek μελανία (melania), "blackness" and that from μέλας (melas), meaning "dark".Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, which has a corporate presence in Ireland, was allowed to register Modern.IE, a

domain hack A domain hack is a domain name that suggests a word, phrase, or name when concatenating two or more adjacent levels of that domain. For example, and , using the domains ''.bot'' and ''.le'', suggest the words ''robot'' and ''example'' respective ...

whose full name reflects its purpose as support for IE (

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

). In February 2016 IEDR began a consultation on the introduction of

internationalized domain name An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in non-Latin script or alphabet or in the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacrit ...

s, in particular the vowel + "fada" characters (á é í ó ú) used in

Irish orthography Irish orthography is the set of conventions used to write Irish. A spelling reform in the mid-20th century led to , the modern standard written form used by the Government of Ireland, which regulates both spelling and grammar. The reform re ...

. IDN domains were launched on a phased basis starting with existing domain holders on 23 October 2016, with general availability starting on 17 November 2016.

Registering a domain

The typical registration fee via accredited .ie registrars is approximately €25 (plus VAT of €5.75). Registration is free for charities registered with the

Revenue Commissioners The Revenue Commissioners (), commonly called Revenue, is the Irish Government agency responsible for customs, excise, taxation and related matters. Though Revenue can trace itself back to predecessors (with the Act of Union 1800 amalgamating ...

. Evidence of entitlement to the domain name (such as evidence of entitlement to use a particular business name via a Registered Business Name certificate or registered company name) and a connection with the island of Ireland are required for registration. The requirement to provide a 'claim to the name' was removed in March 2018, following public consultation.

Second-level domains

There is no official second-level domain policy. A number of domain names, typically those of other

TLD A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domain name, domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the DNS root zone, root zone of the nam ...

s, two letter domains and potentially offensive domains are forbidden from being registered. Nevertheless, the

Government of Ireland The Government of Ireland () is the executive (government), executive authority of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, headed by the , the head of government. The government – also known as the cabinet (government), cabinet – is composed of Mini ...

began using the .gov.ie domain where once it used irlgov.ie. Some government departments continue to use their own non gov.ie domains. Prior to 16 December 2015, two character domains consisting of one letter and one number were permitted, but two-letter domain registrations were not permitted. The only exceptions to the old two letter rule were ul.ie, which was registered by the

University of Limerick University of Limerick (UL) () is a Public university, public research university institution in Limerick, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Founded in 1972, as the National Institute for Higher Education, Limerick, it became a university in Septemb ...

before the rule came into effect, and ns.ie, which is used for the .ie

name server A name server is a computer application that implements a network service for providing responses to queries against a directory service. It translates an often humanly meaningful, text-based identifier to a system-internal, often numeric identi ...

s. The domains in the ''forbidden'' category will return a record for a

WHOIS WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is used for querying databases that store an Internet resource's registered users or assignees. These resources include domain names, IP address blocks and autonomo ...

query but they are not in the .ie zone. In June 2015, the IEDR announced that two-letter names would soon be available; a 30-day registration began in November for a go-live date of 16 December 2015. Where there were multiple applicants for a given combination, an auction was held in early 2016.

Number of registered domains

On 31 March 2022, there were 330,000 registered .ie domain names. This has surpassed the number of Irish-owned and or hosted .com domain names. It is the preferred extension for new Irish businesses. Approximately 140 new .ie domains are registered each working day.

References

External links

.IE

Accredited IE Registrars

IE Personal Domain Names
{{DEFAULTSORT:IE Science and technology in the Republic of Ireland Mass media in the Republic of Ireland Country code top-level domains Internet in Ireland Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries members sv:Toppdomän#I