When the debate on this amendment adjourned before Private Members' Business I was making the point that I regarded the thresholds which had been applied under section 24 to be far too high. The Minister indicated he had taken the thresholds from the Fourth Directive — this is the Directive which the EC has agreed in relation to disclosure of company information etc. While that may well be suitable for Britain or other major industrialised countries in the EC, when you apply it to Ireland you effectively exempt a large number of private limited companies as a result of the thresholds which have been applied. As I said before the debate adjourned, setting the level of exemption at £2.5 million turnover with £1.25 million as assests and 50 as the number of employees, is setting it far too high.
The Minister said he would have difficulty in policing the number of companies concerned for what are known as quasi loans and credit transfers because of the large numbers involved. It is estimated that there are about 25,000 private limited companies in the State. If the Minister decides that a company ought to be investigated and, if upon investigation the only indication of "funny business" relates to the use of company money through what is known as quasi loans or credit transfers, by exempting them under this section he effectively is allowing them off the hook; he is effectively depriving himself of the right to investigate and pursue that company for misappropriation of company funds.
I am quite happy to allow the Minister to introduce an amendment which would exempt very small family run businesses where perhaps husband and wife, brothers and sisters or whatever would be running a small company and basically employing themselves, and they may make arrangements between themselves with regard to lending each other money, paying one another's expenses or buying one another carpeting for their houses, or video machines and — or whatever other transactions they may be involved in. That is quite in order, but when you are dealing with a company who would have a turnover of £2.5 million and the number of employees close to 50 you are dealing with something very different, particularly in relation to employees whose future is being put at risk. The Minister by refusing to accept our amendment is insisting that companies of this size will be exempted. I ask him to explain why he has decided willy-nilly to take on board the criteria in the Fourth Directive or, as Deputy Bruton has pointed out, the thresholds which exist in the company law of the UK. Why does he believe those thresholds apply equally well to the Irish situation? I have argued, and the ICTU have pointed out, that there are far more small companies here which come under the thresholds the Minister has outlined than there are, even as a proportion of companies, in Britain or in other major industrial states in the EC. I fail to see how we can justify the exemption of so many of our private companies. It is providing a major loophole in the Bill and perhaps a major incentive for companies to attempt to shape their turnover, assets or the numbers they have employed by allowing this threshold to remain as it is in the Bill.
