Ireland Airsoft Laws
The status of Airsoft in Ireland was changed after the 2006 Criminal Justice Act, which amended the previous Firearms Acts from 1925, 1963, 1972 and 1990.
Where once authorization or a license was required for all devices which fired a projectile from a barrel, The law now defines a firearm as (amongst other things).The aim of this change was to establish a minimum power a device must have to be classified a firearm in order to eliminate the legal oddity where toy suction cup dart guns and the like were legally classified as firearms, thus bringing Ireland into line with the rest of the EU. In this case, one joule was used as the limit, as opposed to seven joules in Germany, 12 foot-pounds force (8.9 J) in the UK and so on. The one joule limit most likely arose from UK case law where it was found that energies in excess of one joule were required to penetrate an eyeball (thus causing serious injury). As a result, airsoft devices under one joule of power have been declassified and have become perfectly legal to possess and use within The Republic of Ireland. Those over one joule of power remain perfectly legal to possess and use within the Republic, so long as a firearms certificate is applied for and granted by the local Garda superintendent - but they are at this point classed legally as actual firearms.