Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply, in which he states that S.I. 110 entered into force on 22 March 2019. However, from 22 March until 29 July, businesses could not do anything because there was no portal available through which to file their returns. There was a long period time in which businesses were sterilised and their hands were tied. I note that the Minister of State hopes a practical approach will be taken but this affects hundreds of thousands of companies, many of which will have two directors and more. Potentially, a massive number of company directors could be liable for a summary conviction. Under the law, if a company files a late return, its directors are held responsible. I plead with the Minister of State to address this using the relevant statutory instrument. We must extend the deadline in order to be fair.

I also wish to take issue with the approach of the CRO. As I said already, it has publicly admitted on Twitter that there are technical issues with the website. It is not working in many cases and is not compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer. If someone files the data set, he or she cannot even print it off. It is impossible to know what one has filed because one cannot generate a full record of it. One can pay a fee to download a form but it is only a summary of the information filed. We must get our act together on this. We need to be supporting businesses and we cannot have these issues arising. People are trying to do the right thing but will find themselves on the wrong side of the law because of technical issues. The CRO cannot support the traffic to its website. Similar issues arose with ROS recently. We must be fair here and give people and businesses a chance.

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