Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There is not a Minister or Deputy in this House who is not pro-business, be that business small, independent, a sole trader or a transnational corporation. The vast majority of businesses, whether multinational corporations or sole traders, operate legitimately and with probity in relation to their taxation, employment, health and safety and any other corporates of law one cares to mention.

Amendment No. 242 is made up of four subsections. Subsection (1) states that an unlimited company shall disclose by the filing of a notification with the Companies Registration Office a list of all members which are limited companies, and their respective number of allocated shares. The information sought by the amendment is already available on request. Under 217(9)(c) all companies are obliged to allow any person to inspect their members' register on the payment of a fee which must be €10 or less. Section 217(12)(c) obliges companies to send copies of the members' register 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.

In relation to subsections (3) and (4) of the amendment, it would be costly to set up a public register of the type set out, in particular in light of the fact that the information is already available by other means. Currently, there is no requirement to report this information to the CRO. In this regard, the Deputy referred to the possibility of the introduction of legislation. The Deputy is free to introduce legislation to this House. Therefore, there would be costs associated with this for the CRO and the affected companies. The ongoing cost to the CRO and affected companies of making and processing thousands of notifications would be colossal. The costs involved in delays to transfer of ownership in shares would be unacceptably and could interfere with the constitutional rights to private property. That is something we all adhere to also.

I am not sure if the Deputy is suggesting that we should remove unlimited companies from Irish law altogether. Limited companies serve many legitimate business purposes and are a feature of company law across the European Union. Just as guarantee companies and public limited companies are important for certain types of business, unlimited companies also serve an important purpose. Removing them would be disproportionate and would, I would argue, put Ireland at a competitive disadvantage. If the Deputy would like to remove the reporting exemption from unlimited companies, other countries across the EU allow unlimited companies to dispense with reporting requirements. This is because reporting requirements are imposed as a quid pro quo of limited. Where there is no limited liability there is no reason to require financial reporting.

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