FOLLOWING a number of delays, IBEC is due later this month to publish a list of enterprises which have subscribed to its voluntary prompt payment code. This requires subscribers to "agree payment terms at the outset of a deal and stick to them".

It has been criticised by ISME as "limp and aspirational" because of its voluntary nature.

The Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Mr Richard Bruton, is expected to publish a Prompt Payments Bill this year. This is expected to compel public bodies to settle by the end of the month following the issuing of an invoice, with interest payable where payment is late.

Public bodies have in the past been among the worst offenders. Mr Bruton has indicated the legislation may, if such is "endemic" and is costing small business at least £20 million a year.

Much of the evidence for this is, in fact, anecdotal though a study carried out for ISME suggests small firms suffer disproportionately from it.

As regards hard figures, the Task Force on Small Business, which reported in 1994, published figures which showed Ireland to be completely out of line with the rest of Europe. The data suggests were successful, later be extended to the private sector.

Meanwhile, widely quoted figures for late payment are put in doubt, not just by more recent research, but by contemporary studies, including some carried out by those whose figures are being quoted.

Indeed, so confused is the situation that the Small Firms Association intends in the autumn to conduct what it is describing as the first national survey of late payment, a problem which it insists not only have the third highest average contractual period but, at 79 days, have an average delay of 34 days beyond the agreed terms.

This would be 10 days longer than the next worst offenders, Britain and the Netherlands, and more than twice the European average delay of 15 days.

The figures are based on an estimate of average contract period, together with research from Dun and Bradstreet and the international debt collection agency, Intrum Justitia, and it may be that the results were skewed radically upwards by the reliance on the experience of the latter.

The estimate is rejected by Mr Frank de Risi, managing director of Dun and Bradstreet in Ireland, who says "the delay on average is no more than 20 days", which is in line with that of other European countries.

This much lower estimate also features in the Grant Thornton European Business Studies. These show Ireland's average payment period static at in or around 60 days over the past four years, rather than the 79 quoted in the task force report. This is, in fact, slightly lower than the European average.

Both results are supported by a recent survey by the credit information company, Interface Business Information, which gives an average payment period of 56 days with a difference between terms given and taken of 17 days.

"The folklore has it that Irish people pay slow", says Mr de Risi. "As manager of Dun and Bradstreet here I don't have any evidence that people in Ireland pay slower than anywhere else.".

Mr De Risi cautions, however, that his company's figures are based on the transactions of those companies it tracks and this limiting factor would appear to be responsible for the widely different figures.

According to Mr de Risi "the problem in Ireland, if there is one, is not that people don't pay but that they don't go after them in the proper way".

The Small Firms Association recently received a grant of £60,000 from the Department of Enterprise and Employment for what a spokesperson there described as "innovative management training in the area of late payments and credit control".

According to its chairman, Mr Pat Delaney: "If you're going to do business with someone you should get a credit report and take advice on what type of credit you should ask for or extend.

"After you send out the invoice, you should follow up with a phone call before the normal term is up. You need a good contact with your debtors, and if you own your own business that should not be yourself."

"Women", he adds, "tend to make the best credit controllers".