CRH has asked the Government to change the law on financial reporting, seeking Companies Act exemptions that could cut its annual accounting costs by more than €10 million.
The Dublin-based building materials giant has made direct approaches to the departments of finance and enterprise, saying it has faced a “burdensome anomaly” under Irish law since moving its main market listing to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 2023.
The NYSE move led CRH to delist from Euronext Dublin, dealing a blow to the Irish stock exchange as the now $68.2 billion (€59.3 billion) company sought access to deeper pools of capital in the American market.
The New York listing means CRH, the largest Irish indigenous business, must file quarterly accounts under US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). This is in addition to long-standing Companies Act requirements to file annual accounts under separate International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
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Accounting standards are guidelines and conventions for reporting trade, transactions and other financial events. The differences between individual codes can be significant, creating costs for companies if separate reporting streams are required for the same business.
CRH now wants the IFRS obligations scrapped for Irish-registered companies with GAAP obligations, saying it leads to wasteful duplication of accounting in a group with 80,000 staff working in 4,000 business locations in 28 countries.
The company has told officials that the move from IFRS presents no tax advantage. Still, the potential accounting savings are estimated to be greater than €10 million per year.
Lobbying disclosures by CRH chief legal and corporate affairs officer Pádraig Ó Ríordáin cite a letter to Department of Finance secretary general John Hogan “to arrange a meeting to discuss relevant regulatory reporting requirements”.
A filing released under the Freedom of Information Act shows Ó Ríordáin met last September with Hogan. The minute noted “no action points” for Finance on CRH reporting requirements, saying the company proposed “to raise this matter directly with the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment”.
That department, which is responsible for the Companies Act, acknowledged CRH engagement and said it was committed to maintaining a world-class company law code. “Department officials are giving detailed policy and legal consideration to the issues raised,” it said in reply to questions.
“Department officials have indicated their willingness to schedule a meeting with CRH once the current analysis is complete.”
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The changes CRH is seeking would mirror IFRS exemptions granted more than a decade ago to US-registered groups moving their business headquarters to Ireland for tax reasons.
Such measures facilitated manoeuvres known as corporate inversions, in which dozens of American multinationals shifted their tax domicile to Ireland to avail of the low 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate.
The existing exemptions are set out in section 279 of the 2014 Companies Act. The effect was that newly incorporated US-controlled Irish entities, which did not previously file IFRS accounts here, were not required to do so if they also filed Generally Accepted Accounting Principles accounts.
They excluded indigenous groups such as CRH, which made the transition to GAAP reporting in 2023 before moving its primary listing to New York from the London Stock Exchange.
The company maintained a secondary London Stock Exchange listing after joining the NYSE, but set out plans one week ago to delist in April from London.
CRH was approached for comment for this piece.
