The vast majority of Irish businesses are risking fines of up to €2,000 by failing to comply with an EU directive which says they need to display important company information on their websites. The directive, which came into effect on 1 April this year, extended the requirement to show the company name, registration number and registration address on printed communications from the Internet and via e-mail. Failure to comply with the directive can lead to a maximum fine of €2,000. The directive is designed to provide creditors and consumers with the same means of identifying where to seek redress that they have from printed company documents if things go wrong. A survey conducted by AMAS on behalf of the Irish Internet Association (IIA), found that 72 per cent of Irish business home pages did not comply with the new directive. It also found that 84 per cent of online forms on Irish business websites did not meet the requirements either. AMAS only reviewed the top 50 transactional websites in Ireland, covering businesses in financial services, entertainment, travel, media, consumer services and telecoms, so the chances are high that an even greater number of small business websites are not compliant. In March, IT services firm Enclave Technologies tried to raise awareness of the issue by offering to help companies become compliant and providing the service free to the first 150 respondents. Geraldine White, operations manager at Enclave, admitted it had not received a very good response to its offer. She said was not surprised by the AMAS survey’s findings. Although Enclave had made sure its client base was “taken care of”, little had been done to raise awareness of the directive, White argued. The IIA said the survey revealed confusion over the directive. It held a meeting with the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) to raise the concerns of its members. IIA chief executive Fergal O’Byrne said the ODCE had “emphasised that it is not the ultimate arbiter and that only the courts could decide on this. The strong advice coming from the ODCE and endorsed by the IIA is that a company should make every effort to comply to the best of its understanding, “O’ Byrne said. ends
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers