ACCA welcomes Company Law consolidation

ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) has today welcomed the proposed consolidation of the Companies Acts as “the completion of a major milestone in process of reforming and consolidating company law”.

Many of the newer Companies Acts amended individual sections of earlier legislation, leading to company directors having to wade through hundreds of redundant sections to ensure compliance with the law.

It is believed that a consolidated Act will solve this problem.

“The vast majority of the existing company law currently on the statute books, applies exclusively to quoted companies, yet 90% of companies in Ireland are private companies,” said Aidan Clifford, advisory services manager with ACCA Ireland.

“Checking the requirements of the Companies Act 1963 is not sufficient, a director then needs to see if these requirements were amended in any of the other 12 pieces of company legislation passed subsequently. The Consolidated Bill will remove this additional burden.”

“Simplifying and consolidating the 13 different pieces of legislation will make doing business in Ireland cheaper and easier.”

The consolidation process will also remove some anomalies in the penalties for non-compliance where, for example, very minor infringements of company law were designated as indictable offences and potentially carried a jail sentence.

The re-drafting will also simplify some sections, such as the requirement to keep proper books of account. The current requirements require “perfect” rather than “proper” books to be maintained and events outside the companies control could lead to an unavoidable breach of the legislation.