Due to the increasing thresholds of the Companies Acts most Private Limited Companies in Ireland do not require a statutory audit. However there are some exceptions to this rule. These are:

Group structures

Although all companies within the group may satisfy the audit exemption limits , they must nonetheless carry out a statutory audit if they are formed  part of a group structure.

Late Filing Companies

All companies in Ireland receive an Annual Return Date (ARD) which determines when their accounts are due to the Companies Registration Office (CRO). If a company who is audit exempt fails to submit their accounts on time to the CRO, they will not be entitled to claim audit exemption for the current year’s financial statements or the next year’s financial statements .

Example:

Company A has an ARD of the 30/09/2014 for their financial statements year ending 31/12/2013. Under the current rules these accounts would be due to the CRO by the 25/11/2014 at the latest. If they are not received by the CRO on that date then the directors will have to engage an auditor to perform a statutory audit on their 31/12/2013 financial statements and their  31/12/2014 financial statements before they could avail of the audit exemption again.