Irish community life runs on volunteers directing companies they never think of as companies: the sports club, the community hall, the tidy towns group, the local charity — tens of thousands of companies limited by guarantee, plus the unincorporated associations that should probably become them. The same law that governs trading companies governs them all; the difference is that nobody briefed the committee. This practice briefs the committee.
Mary Molloy Solicitors are solicitors, not accountants or tax advisers. Nothing on this page is tax, accounting or financial advice — engage your accountant on those questions, and both advisers together where matters straddle the line. Company law procedures, CRO practice and filing deadlines change frequently, and reform of the law governing owners’ management companies and charities is ongoing; confirm the current position before acting on anything here.
The Files That Repeat
- The contested AGM: factions, proxies, membership challenges — won by whoever reads the constitution first, on either side: club committee disputes;
- The committee coup — or the entrenched committee: elections never held, officers immovable, records missing — the governance reset that regularises control before someone litigates it;
- Charity trustee questions: duties, conflicts, Regulator correspondence and the phased Charities (Amendment) Act 2024 landscape;
- The struck-off club: the CLG dissolved for non-filing with grounds, insurance and grants in limbo — restoration run before the damage compounds;
- Incorporation reviews: the unincorporated club whose committee carries personal exposure it never signed up for — assessed and, where right, converted: the CLG explained;
- Property and money: grounds held on old trusts, grants with conditions, fundraising rules — where governance meets the firm’s property and probate practices.
The Method: Volunteers Protected by Process
Everything on this page reduces to one principle: the volunteer board that runs its machinery is nearly untouchable, and the machinery is light once installed — the annual meeting properly convened, elections actually held, minutes kept, returns filed, conflicts declared, the constitution read before it is needed. Disputes inside community organisations are relationship disputes in their purest form (everyone stays in the parish afterwards), which is why mediation leads here even more than elsewhere — and why the accredited-mediator credential shapes how these files run. The same corpus serves the sector’s biggest cousin: OMCs are typically CLGs themselves, and boards of both learn from each other’s playbook — the OMC governance practice.
A Club or Charity Under Strain?
Committee, trustee or challenger: one call maps the constitution, the duties and the route that leaves the organisation standing.
Call 01 5827148