If a customer asks "does this contain nuts?" and your kitchen guesses, you are carrying a legal risk that ends careers and closes premises. In Ireland you must be able to tell any customer, in writing, which of 14 named allergens are in every dish you serve. It is not best practice — it is law, and Environmental Health Officers check it.
This guide defines the 14 allergens, explains exactly how you have to declare them, and shows how the rule is enforced — so you can get your menu and your kitchen right without wading through the legislation yourself.
Key takeaways
- There are 14 priority allergens you must declare for every food and drink you serve when they are used as ingredients (FSAI).
- For non-prepacked food (anything served loose — a plated meal, a takeaway, a sandwich made to order) the allergen information must be provided in writing, in English or in Irish and English (FSAI).
- Customers must be able to find that information before they buy, without having to ask (FSAI).
- The rules come from EU Regulation 1169/2011, given effect in Ireland by S.I. No. 489 of 2014, as updated by S.I. No. 656 of 2024 (FSAI).
- Enforcement is real: 127 enforcement orders were served on Irish food businesses for food-safety breaches in 2025 (FSAI).
What are the 14 allergens you must declare in Ireland?
The EU sets a single list of 14 priority allergens that must be declared for all foods and drinks when they are used as ingredients in preparing or producing food (FSAI). Every restaurant, café, takeaway and pub kitchen in Ireland works from the same list:
- Cereals containing gluten — wheat, rye, barley and oats
- Crustaceans — prawns, crab, lobster, langoustines
- Eggs
- Fish
- Peanuts
- Soybeans
- Milk — including lactose
- Nuts — almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecan nuts, brazil nuts, pistachio nuts and macadamia nuts
- Celery — including celeriac and celery salt
- Mustard
- Sesame seeds
- Sulphur dioxide and sulphites
- Lupin
- Molluscs — mussels, clams, oysters, squid, snails
These are the only 14 you are legally required to flag, but you must flag them everywhere they appear — including hidden sources. Soy and wheat turn up in soy sauce and stock; sulphites in wine and some dried fruit; celery in many ready-made stocks and spice blends. The list is fixed; the work is knowing where each one hides in your recipes.
What's the law behind the 14 allergens?
The 14-allergen list comes from EU Regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011 — the Food Information to Consumers (FIC) regulation. In Ireland it is given legal effect by S.I. No. 489 of 2014, as updated by S.I. No. 656 of 2024 (FSAI).
The practical point for an owner is simple: the same list and the same duty apply whether you run a 200-cover restaurant or a one-person coffee cart. There is no small-business exemption from allergen declaration. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) coordinates the law; the day-to-day checking is done by Environmental Health Officers.
Do you have to provide allergen information in writing?
Yes — for non-prepacked food, the information must be in writing. The FSAI is explicit: "Food businesses must indicate food allergens in writing for non-prepacked food at the point of presentation, or sale, or supply" (FSAI).
Non-prepacked food is most of what a restaurant serves: a meal plated to order, a takeaway packed at the counter, a sandwich or salad assembled on request. For all of it the allergen information must:
- be provided in written form in English, or in Irish and English;
- be in a legible handwritten or printed format; and
- be easily located and accessible before the sale, so that "customers must have the information before buying and must not have to ask for the information" (FSAI).
A verbal answer from a staff member is not enough on its own. Written information "may need to be supplemented by verbal communication" in certain circumstances, but the written record is the baseline — a member of staff pointing at an allergen matrix, not improvising from memory (FSAI). The most common way to meet the rule is an allergen matrix: a grid listing every menu item against the 14 allergens, available at the point of sale.
What's the difference between prepacked and non-prepacked food?
The duty is the same — declare all 14 allergens — but the format differs.
- Prepacked food (anything sold in packaging it was put into before being offered for sale — a bottled sauce, a packaged cake) must carry a full ingredients list, and the allergens within it must be highlighted so they stand out from the other ingredients, for example through font, style or background colour (FSAI).
- Non-prepacked food (served loose, as above) does not need a label on each plate, but the allergen information must be indicated in writing and accessible before sale (FSAI).
If you make sandwiches in the morning and wrap them for the chilled cabinet, get advice on which category they fall into — packing food on-site for direct sale has its own labelling expectations, and it is the area owners most often get wrong.
How is allergen labelling enforced in Ireland?
Allergen rules sit inside Ireland's wider food-safety regime, and that regime has teeth. In 2025, 127 enforcement orders were served on food businesses for breaches of food-safety legislation — a decrease of 4.5% on the 132 served in 2024. Of the 2025 orders, 102 were Closure Orders, 23 were Prohibition Orders and 2 were Improvement Orders (FSAI).
Those orders are served by "Environmental Health Officers in the Health Service Executive, sea-fisheries protection officers in the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, and by officers of the FSAI on food businesses throughout the country" (FSAI). For most restaurants the front-line inspector is the HSE Environmental Health Officer.
A Closure Order can shut all or part of your premises immediately, and enforcement orders are published on the FSAI website — a reputational hit as much as an operational one. Allergen failings can feed into that enforcement chain alongside hygiene and storage breaches, which is why allergen declaration is not a paperwork nicety but part of staying open.
This is the same compliance discipline behind getting your Irish restaurant employment law right and applying the correct hospitality VAT rate — the inspectors are different, but the cost of getting it wrong lands on the same business.
How should you manage allergens day to day?
The law tells you what to declare; running a tight kitchen is how you do it reliably.
A practical routine:
- Build an allergen matrix. A single grid: every menu item down one side, the 14 allergens across the top, a clear mark in each cell. Keep it at the point of sale and update it the day a recipe changes — not the week after.
- Work from supplier specifications. Get allergen spec sheets from every supplier and check them when products are reformulated. The recipe you wrote in January may contain an allergen the manufacturer added in March.
- Control cross-contact. Separate utensils, boards and fryers; a "may contain" caution is not a substitute for handling, but uncontrolled cross-contact is how a nut-free dish becomes a hospital visit.
- Train every shift. New starters and agency staff need to know where the matrix lives and that the answer to any allergen question is checked, never guessed.
- Keep it accurate and current. An out-of-date matrix is worse than none — it gives false confidence.
Your allergen matrix also belongs somewhere customers and staff can reach it instantly. Many owners now keep the current matrix on the restaurant's own website or digital menu — the one channel you control and can update in seconds — so it is never out of date the way a laminated card on the counter quietly becomes. However you publish it, the legal test is the same: accurate, in writing, and available before the customer buys.
Frequently asked questions
How many allergens must restaurants declare in Ireland?
- The EU sets 14 priority allergens that must be declared for all foods and drinks when used as ingredients, and the same list applies to every food business in Ireland (FSAI).
Do Irish restaurants have to provide allergen information in writing?
Yes, for non-prepacked food. The FSAI states food businesses "must indicate food allergens in writing for non-prepacked food at the point of presentation, or sale, or supply" (FSAI).
Can staff just tell customers about allergens verbally?
No — not on its own. Written information is the baseline requirement; verbal communication can supplement it in certain circumstances but cannot replace it (FSAI).
What is an allergen matrix?
A grid listing every menu item against the 14 allergens, showing which dishes contain which. It is the most common way restaurants meet the written-information rule and is kept available at the point of sale.
What law requires allergen labelling in Ireland?
EU Regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011 (Food Information to Consumers), given effect in Ireland by S.I. No. 489 of 2014, as updated by S.I. No. 656 of 2024 (FSAI).
Is gluten one of the 14 allergens?
Cereals containing gluten — wheat, rye, barley and oats — are one of the 14. They must be declared wherever they are used as ingredients (FSAI).
Do customers have to ask for allergen information?
No. The information must be easily located and accessible before sale — "customers must have the information before buying and must not have to ask for the information" (FSAI).
Who enforces allergen rules in Irish restaurants?
Environmental Health Officers in the HSE are the front-line inspectors, alongside FSAI officers and, for fisheries, the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority (FSAI).
How many enforcement orders were served on Irish food businesses in 2025?
127 enforcement orders for food-safety breaches — 102 Closure Orders, 23 Prohibition Orders and 2 Improvement Orders — down 4.5% on the 132 served in 2024 (FSAI).
Does the 14-allergen rule apply to small cafés and takeaways?
Yes. There is no small-business exemption — the same 14-allergen declaration duty applies whether you serve 10 covers or 200.
The bottom line
The 14 allergens are fixed and the duty is plain: declare every one of them, in writing, for the food you serve, and make that information available before the customer buys. Build an accurate allergen matrix, keep it current from supplier specs, train every shift to check rather than guess, and you turn a legal exposure into a routine. In a year when 127 Irish food businesses were served enforcement orders, the kitchens that treat allergen information as a daily discipline are the ones that stay open.
