Climate change can now been seen in the Companies Registration Office (CRO) as, following a drought in prosecutions for a number of years, it has re-started prosecuting companies for late filing of Annual Returns.
The CRO suspended prosecutions following the introduction of the Companies Act. Now that companies and practitioners have had an opportunity to become familiar with the Act the CRO have now re-started a prosecutorial regime.
Currently, there are over 214,000 companies on the Register. Compliance with Annual Return filing deadlines for the past number of years has consistently hit over 80% per year leaving a potential pool of 42,800 companies that might fall into the category of late filing.
Obviously, a number of variables apply but, that said, just over 20 companies have been prosecuted by the CRO. These companies will have to appear before the Courts in November, and without over relying on weather related puns it is fair to describe this level of prosecution as a trickle.
Upon conviction the Courts can apply a Class A Fine (€5,000) per offence. It will be interesting to see how the Courts deal with the prosecutions in November as historically outcomes could best be described as patchy. Will the trickle become a flood? Only time will tell but, I would not be putting out the sandbags just yet!