Ireland has brought its collective redress regime into operation with a new set of court rules and its first substantive judgment, yet the country's continuing prohibition on third-party litigation funding still stands between qualified entities and viable claims.

As reported by Arthur Cox, S.I. No. 488 of 2026 took effect on 12 October, inserting Order 15, rules 40 to 46 into the Rules of the Superior Courts and setting out the procedural framework for representative actions under the Representative Actions for the Protection of the Collective Interests of Consumers Act 2023. A separate instrument, S.I. No. 465 of 2026, exempted qualified entities from court fees from 11 September.

The firm's Richard Willis, Joanelle O'Cleirigh, Kate O'Donohoe, Edel Curry and Peter Woods also point to the first substantive judgment under the Act, *Irish Council for Civil Liberties v Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited* [2026] IEHC 640, delivered by Mr Justice Mulcahy.

Despite the procedural progress, the authors identify the funding prohibition as a material obstacle to the regime functioning as intended. Qualified entities must finance proceedings without recourse to commercial funders, a constraint that significantly narrows the range of claims that can realistically be brought. Recommendations from the Law Reform Commission on third-party funding remain outstanding, leaving the question of whether Ireland will relax its position unresolved as the new rules come into force.

Third-party funding agreements are not automatically void in the Philippines despite the country's long-standing hostility to champerty, according to a new analysis of the Supreme Court's reasoning in *RODCO Consultancy and Maritime Services Corp v Ross*.

As reported by Asia Business Law Journal, Anthony Jacoba, Jermiss Mishania Muarip and Rex Emmanuel Apad of Manila firm Ocampo & Suralvo write that the Court's November 2023 decision stopped short of imposing a blanket prohibition. Instead, a funding arrangement falls foul of Article 1409 of the Civil Code only where its terms are grossly disadvantageous to the funded party, leaving the enforceability of each agreement to turn on its specific commercial terms rather than on the existence of funding itself.

The authors note that the champerty doctrine in the Philippines developed principally as a constraint on lawyers, who are barred from acquiring an interest in the subject matter of litigation they handle. A funder that is not counsel sits outside that prohibition, which the authors argue creates space for institutional capital to support arbitration claims.

Disclosure is already part of the local framework. The 2021 Arbitration Rules of the Philippine Dispute Resolution Center require parties to disclose pre-existing funding arrangements, aligning Philippine practice with the transparency expectations now common across major arbitral institutions. The authors suggest the combination of a narrow champerty rule and a disclosure obligation gives funders a workable, if still untested, route into Philippine-seated disputes.