Professor Eamonn Walsh:

Again, we must distinguish between ringing a warning bell for external users or internal users. The former would happen, largely, at a very late stage. It is probably fair to say that in terms of audits for external users, any signals from the auditor's report published by a bank is going to come late in the day. That occurred for the British banks, the Irish banks and indeed, right across the banking sector. The audit report is something that comes late in the day and it is really only when the ship is sinking and has probably hit the bottom of the seabed that it suddenly becomes apparent that the audit report is flagging something.