The objective of this paper is to analyse, on two levels, the investment appraisal practices of the top 1,000 Irish companies. The first level is a standard extent of usage analysis, deriving some basic structural data on investment appraisal practices. The deeper level and the unique contribution of this paper, is an examination of why discounted cash flow (DCF) techniques are not used in investment appraisal. This paper falls into a long tradition of investment appraisal survey papers. Our particular concern has been with recent studies examining practices in Britain, Scotland and Ireland [Pike (1983a) Pike (1988), Ho & Pike (1991, 1992), McIntyre and Coulthurst (1986), (Sangster 1993)]. So far as we are aware, the only significant reported research on the investment ap praisal practices of Irish companies was undertaken by Green and Mcllkenny (1991). While producing some interesting results to which we return later, the study was hampered both by a small sample size (89 companies). This limitation was acknowledged by the authors, as was the probable presence of non-response bias. Table 1 (over) summarises the investment appraisal practices reported in the present survey and three other large scale surveys conducted in the United Kingdom during the 1980’s and early 1990’s. Table 1 suggests that there might be significant differences between the investment appraisal practices of Irish and UK companies. While Irish companies in this study tend to be more likely than UK companies to adopt a formal procedure (in the sense of having a uniformly applied mechanism for assessing expenditure), that procedure is less likely either to be ‘DCF’ based or to include a post-expenditure audit.