I take it the Deputy's question arises from my replies to supplementary points he raised in the context of Question No. 33 on 10 October 1995 (Volume 456, No. 6, columns 1444/50). Since then, the "Companies Report" for July 1993 to December 1994 has been published and that report adverts, inter alia, to the subject matter raised by the Deputy. There is no question of the Companies Office having a policy of not striking off companies which have failed to make the statutory annual returns for over three years. The companies report outlines the various enforcement actions of the Office. Official striking-off is only one of the possible actions. The report also adverts at page 29 to the rates of statutory compliance by companies. Essentially, a four-pronged approach has been adopted to improve filing rates in the Companies Office using the law as it currently stands. In 1996, it is proposed to petition the courts to disqualify directors who neglect their filing responsibilites. Thus, current enforcement measures include: a statutory “late-filing fee”; prosecution of companies; prosecution of directors; company strike-offs, and most recently, proposed disqualification of directors for failure to file returns.
At the registrar's direction, 5,607 were struck off the register in 1992, 13,087 in 1993, 4,025 in 1994 and 14,351 in 1995.
The initiative of the "late-filing fee" resulted in a considerable number of companies bringing their affairs up to date. By way of illustration, 28,000 annual returns were filed in the immediate run-up to the introduction of the fee in October 1993; in October 1994, 13,000 annual returns were filed and in October 1995, over 10,000 annual returns were filed. These figures compare with an average monthly intake of some 5,500 returns.
In 1992, 593 companies were prosecuted for failure to file returns, 2,341 in 1993, 1,979 in 1994 and 626 in 1995.
In 1993, a decision was taken by the registrar to commence prosecution of individual directors of companies in respect of their personal failure to ensure the filing of statutory documents. As a result, 40 were prosecuted in 1993, 103 in 1994 and 116 in 1995.