Irish Independent
5 August 2009
By Laura Noonan
Accountants Grant Thornton yesterday called on the Irish authorities to swiftly implement new accounting standards that could drastically cut red tape for 180,000 of our SMEs.
It has been three weeks since the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) launched its new global protocol for SME accounting, which reduces the book of accounting standards from 3,000 pages to just 300.
So far, South Africa is the only country to adopt the measures in full, having welcomed it as providing "crucial relief" for small-to-medium enterprises being battered by the global financial crisis.
Back in Ireland, correspondence from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland to Grant Thornton shows that while the code is "effective immediately" that "only means it is available for use immediately in countries where it has been adopted".
"For the standard to apply to Irish companies it would have to be either (or both) adopted by the EU and rolled out across member states or adopted into UK and Irish GAAP by the ASB [Accounting Standards Board]," the note continued.
"The message is that we should wait for the UK or Europe, but we shouldn't be waiting, we should be leading," said Grant Thornton partner Patrick Burke.
Mr Burke said the new protocol could reduce the burden of financial reporting on SMEs by 90pc, providing much-needed relief for the 20pc of Irish businesses who rated red-tape as a a "significant constraint" on their business in a recent Grant Thornton survey.