Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Under section 216(9)(c), every company is obliged to allow any person to inspect its members' register on the payment of a fee, which must be €10 or less. Section 216(12)(c) obliges companies to send a copies of their members' registers to any person who requests it, again for a fee of €10 or less. This register contains the names and addresses of members and the number of shares held by each member. This also applies to unlimited companies.

As there is currently no requirement to report this information to the Companies Registration Office, it would be costly to set up a register both for the Companies Registration Office and for the affected companies. The ongoing cost to the CRO and affected companies of making and processing thousands of notifications would also be significant. The costs involved in delays to transfer of ownership of shares would be unacceptably high and could interfere with constitutional rights to private property. The information is already publicly available on request and the cost of creating and maintaining such a public register would be considerable, so I am not in favour of this amendment.