Mr. Brendan Murtagh:

We also agree that there needs to be some form of exemption regime. That already exists under the Companies Act. In terms of ensuring that stakeholders are protected insofar as is possible, those criteria have already been established within company law and they relate to turnover, assets and number of employees. Those criteria are reasonably substantial thresholds within company law. However, there is also a protection. In the context of something that would potentially be analogous, if we consider the position of companies limited by guarantee where we are looking at protecting our membership in that respect, there is the override that if there is a single member who is not comfortable with the fact that a company is availing of an exemption, that member can require an audit. Commercially, in terms of what is protecting stakeholder interests, the exemption thresholds are appropriate provided that safeguard is in place. Our issue here is that there should be a correlation between the Bill and the provisions in the Companies Act regarding the numbers. If there is a change, it should not necessarily be ignored. There should be a direct impact of that change such that if it is deemed that the thresholds should be larger, this would trigger a review of the thresholds relating to industrial and provident societies and vice versa.