Everyone in Ireland is affected by the administrative state. For the most part, the bodies involved are creatures of statute that are subject to the law, as set down by the superior courts. The focus in this chapter is on the constraints of public law, which is highly centralized, with legal interpretation firmly vested in the judicial branch. In addition, there is relatively little legal pluralism. Irish judges have adopted a traditionalist approach to the relationship between the judiciary and the administrative state. The courts control the articulation of legal norms, giving little or no weight to the views of non-lawyers about the meaning of law. They rely moreover on a formalistic distinction between questions of law, which are for the courts, and questions of fact or policy, which are for non-lawyers. Bringing comparative perspectives to bear allows us to observe how traditional Irish judges have been in this area.