Chartered Accountants Ireland, Ireland's largest and longest established professional accountancy body, has welcomed the publication by the Accounting Standards Board of an exposure draft entitled 'The Future of Financial Reporting in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland."
The ASB document acknowledges that its current standards are no longer long term viable and sets outs its proposals for the adoption of the International Accounting Standards Boards International Finance Reporting Standards for SMES. The ASB has indicated that it is moving to this new standard because its current standard runs to 2,000 pages and is 'unwieldy'.
The Exposure draft sets out a three tier approach:
- Tier 1 public accountable or public interest entities would sue full EU adopted IFRS
- Tier 2 non publicly accountable entities would use the new IFRS for SMEs standard
- Tier 3 smaller entities could continue to use the Financial Reporting Standard for Smaller Entities (although this standard is not used to any great extend in the Republic of Ireland.
Commenting Chartered Accountants Ireland Director of Technical Policy, Aidan Lambe, said:
"What the ASB is trying to do here is streamline accounting standards for non public interest entities and create a single IFRS platform on which future financial reporting will be based. Chartered Accountants Ireland supports them in this goal. The move to IFRS for SMEs in particular, for publicly non accountable companies, is among the biggest changes in accounting standards for a generation and unlike the move to full IFRS in 2005 will impact on a considerably larger number of entities.
For its part Chartered Accountants Ireland has been active in the ASB's consultative process hosting a number of events for stakeholders in Chartered Accountants House. In addition we have been running courses all over Ireland to update members on the IFRS for SME standard.
The publication of this exposure draft offers all stakeholders an opportunity to make a contribution to this process and we would encourage as many as possible to avail of it."