Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We continue our scrutiny of COM (2011) 778, a proposal for a directive on statutory audits of annual accounts and consolidated accounts and COM (2011) 779, a proposal for a regulation on statutory audits of public interest entities.

I welcome Ms Karen Erwin, chairperson, Mr. Joe O'Toole, board member, Ms Helen Hall, head of regulatory and monitoring supervision and Ms Marie Colivet, project manager, regulatory and monitoring supervision, of the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority. I also welcome Mr. Pat Houlihan, principal officer, company law, and Ms Marie Dempsey, HEO, from the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.

Ms Erwin will be invited to make a presentation to the committee, which will be followed by an opening statement by Mr. Pat Houlihan and a question and answer session. Before we begin, I wish to advise the witnesses that by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they are to give to this committee. If they are directed by it to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and continue to so do, they are entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against a person or persons or an entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable. Members are reminded of the long-standing ruling of the Chair to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.