Paper payments to CRO ‘complete disgrace’, Isme chairman says

The Companies Registration Office (CRO) is making it harder for businesses to comply with the law by not facilitating online payment for forms that must be filed by paper, the chairman of the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association (Isme) has said.

Ross McCarthy, managing director of Wexford-based Keystone Procurement, tweeted it was “a complete disgrace” that in 2020 companies found themselves obliged to send cheques, bank orders or postal orders to the CRO in order to file certain company secretarial materials and be compliant with company law.

A recorded message on the CRO’s phoneline has been directing businesses to its website for information, but Mr McCarthy said numerous processes cannot yet be completed through the public body’s Companies Online Registration Environment (Core) system.

‘Bureaucratic and expensive’

As his business doesn’t have access to chequebooks through its bank, he must arrange for a “bureaucratic and expensive” bank order or postal order to file a form relating to the company by a fixed deadline.

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The Isme chairman noted that the CRO was “ordinarily a helpful and efficient body” and that he was “quite surprised” to be encountering such hurdles five months after the Covid-19 crisis first hit.

The CRO’s automated phone message tells callers that due to circumstances beyond its control, it is “not possible to take your call at present”. The message adds that the CRO hopes to have service restored “as soon as possible”.