Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle's office for selecting for debate this important matter and the effect it can have on SMEs throughout the country. SI 110 of 2019 set a date for the legal obligation to file beneficial ownership information with the Central Register of Beneficial Ownership of Companies and Industrial and Provident Societies, or the register of beneficial ownership, RBO. There may be more than 300,000 companies operating in Ireland. All of them, including friendly societies and various other configurations, are obliged to file with the RBO by this Friday, 22 November.

Consider the trajectory that the Companies Registration Office, CRO, has set. We were advised that the portal would be up and running in April to file the returns required by the statutory instrument. It had not happened by May. We were then advised that it would be up and running by the end of May. June came, but it was still not up and running. It was not until 29 July that the portal to make these returns went live on the CRO's website. Tax practitioners complete company returns and company accounts, and directors of small family businesses up and down the State rely on them to ensure compliance.

Essentially, from September until the first week in December, they are at capacity. The corporation tax deadline falls in the middle of September and approximately 55,000 companies have to file their returns then. The income tax deadline must be met by every company director in the State at the end of October or, if using the online system ROS, by the middle of November. Then we have the annual returns for those companies with December year-ends which must be filed by 25 November. A huge body of work must be completed by accounting practitioners over that period of time and they do not have the capacity to comply with a new requirement.

I have no objection to the requirement itself in terms of what it seeks to do and am not looking for legislative change. I am simply asking that a reasonable approach is taken so that ordinary businesses can comply because the penalty for non-compliance is very severe. It is €5,000 on summary conviction but has the potential to run to €500,000 on indictment. The CRO has opened a Twitter account on which it has admitted that its website is not working. The website is not compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer but the CRO is working with its IT department to resolve this issue. Four days ago it admitted that there were issues with the website. There is a huge amount of traffic to the Twitter account with people asking what is happening. In its last update, which was 48 hours ago, the CRO said it was working on the issue with its IT staff. A little more than 30% of companies have complied with the RBO at this point in time. The portal is not working properly and is either very slow or crashing and the CRO has admitted on its Twitter account this week that there are problems with it. We must be reasonable here and send a very clear signal that we are going to work with businesses on this. We must revise the deadline so that when capacity is restored to the system, we will get this information up-to-date. We want to work with businesses and individuals to ensure compliance.

On 10 October the CRO issued a news bulletin stating that in the two months since the RBO opened a high number of submissions had failed. One of the reasons for failure is the website itself while the other reason is that the data being sought is very technical and must match data held by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. We are talking here about names and dates of birth. If a middle name, for example, is spelled incorrectly or is at variance with data held in the aforementioned Department, the return may not go through. A huge body of work needs to be done here and I ask the Minister of State to be reasonable and to provide for an extension of the deadline.

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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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.

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I accept the Deputy's point about fairness. That said, making any late changes to the statutory instrument at this stage is likely to give rise to difficulties at EU level. If a pragmatic approach was adopted by the registrar of the RBO with regard to marginally late filings vis-à-vis the deadline, that would be helpful. However, I would reiterate that the register has been open for filing since 29 July, which is almost four months or 110 days ago. We have 32% of returns filed at this point. If the system has crashed or has not been operating properly, as happened with ROS recently, then that is a legitimate reason for filings being late. A little bit of common sense can and should be applied here.