Report of Payments to Governments

Entity Payment Report
A company shall in respect of its entity payment report, for each financial year, include the following in relation to its relevant activities:

(a) the government to which each payment has been made, including the country of that government;
(b) the total amount of payments made to each government;
(c) the total amount per type of payment made to each government;
(d) where those payments have been attributed to a specific project, the total amount per type of payment made for each such project and the total amount of payments for each such project.

(Where a company makes a payment that is not attributable to a specific project, it shall not be necessary in the entity payment report to allocate it to a specific project).

A company shall not be required to include a payment in the entity payment report if— (a) it is a single payment of an amount less than €100,000, or (b) it forms part of a series of related payments within a financial year where the total amount of that series of payments is less than €100,000. However, payments, activities and projects shall not be artificially split or aggregated to avoid the application.

The disclosure of payments is required to reflect the substance, rather than the form, of each payment, relevant activity or project concerned. Where payments in kind are made to a government, the entity payment report shall state the value of such payments in kind and, where applicable, the volume of those payments in kind, and the directors shall provide supporting notes to explain how the value of such payments in kind has been determined.

Content of consolidated payment report
A holding company shall in respect of its consolidated payment report, for each financial year, include the same information as set out above for an entity payment report and shall also state:
(a) any payments resulting from the relevant activities of a mining or quarrying undertaking and (b) any payments resulting from the relevant activities of a logging undertaking.

Where an undertaking makes a payment that is not attributable to a specific project, it shall not be necessary in the consolidated payment report to allocate it to a specific project.

Exemptions are available under Chapter 4 Part 26 of the Companies Act 2014:

• An exemption to preparing a payment report is available to a subsidiary/holding company if the entity payment report is included in a consolidated payment report prepared by the holding company (section 1454)
• An exemption is available from producing the entity/consolidated report if the company has a higher holding undertaking based in another EU State where the higher company has produced a consolidated report that includes the Irish Companies information.
• The directors will also be exempt where the company is subject to equivalent reporting requirements and the payments have been disclosed in this other report (section 1455).
• An exemption is available from producing the entity/consolidated report if the company has a higher holding undertaking based in another EU State where the higher company has produced an equivalent reporting requirements consolidated report that includes the Irish Companies information (section 1456).
• An exception is under section 1460 CA 2014 as amended where the directors are exempt where the company instead submits a copy of the entity consolidated) report prepared in accordance with the equivalent reporting requirements within 28 days after such payment is made available to the public under the equivalent reporting requirements.