IT Failures in the Companies Registrations Office (CRO)

The final look at IT failures brings us to the Companies office, and the CRO search facility that crashed multiple times on the run up to the busiest filing time for Companies in Ireland with December year ends.

In one way I do have to applaud the CRO for their push towards digital document filing and their no-nonsense approach to filing regulations however, to lose the ability to search company information around deadline smells of a system under pressure.

While I understand a full rebuild is underway, it has been pushed back time and time again. The more this drags out, the shakier and shakier the existing platforms become.

As part of the rebuild, I would really urge the various Government departments to join up their process of registration and fully integrate this to a single simple platform.

At present Company Registration, Beneficial Ownership and Tax Registration are all completed independently of each other, in a modern society, this portrays a very old-style approach and creates a ridiculous burden on those looking after the registrations such as our team at Icon Accounting. If we were to adopt the UK model, the company registration process is a one stop shop for all such services.

I would further enhance this process to include a full identity verification section to ensure all Directors “are who they say they are” and are compliant with Anti-Money Laundering regulations.

Anti-Money Laundering regulations are pushed to the service providers all the time, but why can’t we take a top down approach to this in order to let the Government get involved in part of it? At the end of the day, they do control the PPS numbers, Passports and Driving Licences!

Next month I will look at the importance of document retention or the family home.