Mr. Pat Houlihan:

I thank the Chairman and those members who have made contributions on the debate thus far. First, I must come clean with an omission of my own. Somehow or other, mandatory rotation seemed to slip through the cracks. I probably delayed members for so long that I scuttled my finishing line. In any event, the proposal on mandatory rotation in the regulation is that it should occur every six years and were one to have a joint audit, one could add a further three years to that. As I stated, the European Parliament has not yet made up its mind on this subject. However, on foot of exploratory contacts, the indications are it may be thinking of a longer period. However, I perceive it to be one of the key elements of the proposal.

Obviously, in the kind of time I understood to have available to me, I could not get into the meat and the detailed substance of the proposal. However, I certainly direct those members who have commented on perceived superficiality in terms of the audit process itself to Title III, Article 31 of the regulation. Were one to read on from there, one would find there is quite a lot of substance and meat in there that, if these measures are acted upon, will allow people to gain far greater assurance in the future than may be the case at present.

I will attempt to summarise and address the comments made by the various speakers. If I miss a point or a speaker, members should feel free to come back, assuming they have the time to so do. It is not discourtesy but my handwriting is poor and my notes are jagged. I will do the best I can but members should come back to me if I missed something.

Deputy Calleary drew attention to the absence of mandatory rotation and I believe I have just covered that point. I also mentioned what in substance is contained at Title III of the regulation, if one wades through it. We would need another session to go through that and for our part, we would be happy to participate if a further session was needed, as well as to go through the meat of it and pick out what we might wish to discuss the next time. As I took this meeting to be a form of general run-through, I did not want to bog it down.