Ireland · Charges and receivers

Registering a charge, the two procedures and the company's own register of charges

the Companies Act 2014 · sections 409 to 411, 413 and 418

The 21-day period is the whole of the risk. Under the one-stage procedure, the prescribed particulars in the prescribed form must be received by the Registrar not later than 21 days after the date of the charge's creation (section 409(3)). Under the two-stage procedure, a notice of intention to create the charge goes first, and a notice stating that the charge has been created must be received not later than 21 days after the Registrar received the first notice (section 409(4)).

The duty sits on the company, not on the lender, although the section preserves the position of others. It is the duty of the company that creates the charge to comply with section 409(3) or (4) with respect to registration (section 410(1)). Where a company acquires property already subject to a charge that would have required registration had the company created it, the company must see that the prescribed particulars reach the Registrar not later than 21 days after the date on which the acquisition is completed (section 411(2)).

Section 413 sets the procedure for registering a judgment mortgage, which requires the prescribed particulars to reach the Registrar together with the relevant judgment mortgage document (section 413(2)). The consequences of failing to register are set by the Part rather than by the instrument, so a lender who relies on the deed alone may find the security ineffective against a liquidator or a purchaser.

The company keeps its own record as well. A company must keep a copy of every instrument creating a charge in relation to it that requires registration under the Part, including, in the case of a judgment mortgage, a copy of the relevant document (section 418(1)). All such copies must be kept at the same place (section 418(2)), which makes a scattered set of loan files a breach in itself.

File 65 of the IE-COMPANY package covers this situation on its own. It asks for every charge created or acquired in the period, the date of creation or of completion of the acquisition, which procedure was used, the date the particulars reached the Registrar, and where the copy instrument is held. The output records each charge as a row with its own status, so a single late registration is visible rather than buried in a general answer.

This situation is covered by these files from the pack IE-COMPANY

• File 65 · Registration of charges and the company's register of charges

ComplianceSME tracks the Companies Act 2014 and issues update files through the membership, so that you are never working from a superseded version. Membership

Back to the Irish library →