Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

I think that it is probably a function of the retirement of people who were in organisations long term and who had dealt with the financial issues. What has also increased the difficulty for organisations is the emphasis we have put, since 2009, on propriety and regularity issues. We are looking at more things than would normally be looked at in the course of a financial audit.

That has put a demand on the resource of our audit teams, but it also puts a resource onus on the entity to provide explanations of a type that is not necessarily amenable to analytic work. Not only must documents be read, they must be interpreted. Committee members have seen here how difficult it can be sometimes to get a clear explanation from an Accounting Officer and how difficult it can be for him or her to find the information to give to the committee.