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Audit engagements for strike off/Re-in-statement engagements

Neil Doran February 28, 2019

Welcome to Query Of The Week

You are very welcome to this week’s Query Of The Week. Each week our technical team respond to a huge number of client queries and in this segment, we share with you the most common questions that keep coming up time and time again.

In this week’s Query Of The Week, Neill Doran examines options to restore a company which has been previously struck off.

 

Audit engagements for strike off/Re-in-statement engagements

If this Query Of The Week was of interest to you, you will also be interested in our Restoring Struck Off Companies (Audit, Company Law & FS Presentation).

Full details for this online course can be found here.

CPD Allocation 1 Hour
Fee €25 (or 1 CPD Club point)
Presenter Neill Doran – OmniPro
Category Audit

Query Of The Week – Video Transcript

(Please note that this is a direct unedited transcript of the spoken word as recorded on the video) 

Hello and welcome to this week’s query of the week.

I’m Neill Doran of OmniPro practice support, and I’d like to thank you for sending in your frequently asked questions and queries to Knowledge Hub.

This week’s query concerns a company obtaining a High Court restoration.

As an auditor, I’m asked this question from time to time, where a client approaches me to find out what they have to do to have a previously struck-off company reinstated.

When a company has been struck-off for more than one year you need a High Court restoration.

A standard High Court restoration process has some requirements and steps to be followed.

  1. A letter of consent (letter of no objection) is required from the Chief State Solicitor, the company’s registration office, and the revenue commissioners.
  2. Under normal circumstances all returns need to be filed with the CRO and Revenue before a letter of no objection can be obtained. Situations can arise whereby the CRO and revenue will consent to the restoration on the basis that all outstanding returns will be filed within a prescribed time limit. These are exceptional circumstances and will ultimately be at the discretion of the judge.
  3. The company, (the most important point from an auditor’s perspective) must prepare and have audited financial statements for all years up to the proposed date of restoration, and these should be filed with the CRO along with any late file fees up to a maximum of 3,600 euros in total. Now if, for instance, I have a company that has some property and it has been struck off for 15 years, I must prepare 15 years’ sets of accounts; and accordingly, they must be audited for each and every year.
  4. Finally, an affidavit must be drafted setting out various details of the company, including the activities of the company, how it came to be dissolved, and why the directors request that it be restored. Then the affidavit, along with the various items, are required to be presented to the judge.

Therefore, having presented your Financial Statements and the Affidavit, to the CRO and the Revenue Commissioners, et cetera; the judge ultimately makes the final decision as to whether the company can be restored or not. If the application is successful, then the order is granted and, once perfected, lodged with the CRO and the company is restored.

I hope this fully explains your question about how a High Court restoration process operates. I’m Neill Doran, and I’d like to thank you and ask you to please continue to send in any questions you might have to Knowledge Hub.