Mr. Brendan Lenihan:

Prospective members have a choice of nine professional bodies. The standards we set in regard to educational attainment and continuing professional development and competency are controlled by IAASA. It is not possible for a body to lower its standards significantly or raise them unrealistically in order to exclude certain individuals. It is not a question of any one body acting as a monopoly or otherwise trying to force people to take one or two options. A number of the bodies also operate in other jurisdictions, in which case they are supervised by regulators in respect of their standards and competencies. This is a well-established area.

It is impossible to estimate the scale of the problem of unregistered practitioners. I get the sense from meeting our own members that it is a significant problem. It has come to the fore in recent years as circumstances became more testing for clients and the advice more focused on difficult areas that previously had fallen into disuse, such as insolvency. IAASA has told us it regularly receives inquiries about unregistered accountants but it finds it difficult to collate information on them because they are outside its scope. As I noted in my presentation, even if the number is very small, there ought to be a principle that somebody who holds him or herself out as an accountant should be supervised by the State regulator. If one is not willing to be supervised, one should not call oneself an accountant.