Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I assumed it was intended to set out some accounting practices and the use of those practices to align with standards.

The Minister of State referred earlier to the fact that the standards are talking to an international audience. The legislation allows companies to compile annual reports based on a number of standards. We have now suggested that they can do so according to accounting practices here, to international standards, to Canadian standards, to Japanese standards, to American standards or, possibly, to a number of other standards. Why do we not require them to present accounts to the Irish standards, which are the international standard anyway? We use the European standard. Why do we not ask companies to comply with one standard? Five different funds might be quite similar to each other but might present their accounts in five different formats.