Professor Eamonn Walsh:

I shall turn the question on its head. It is easy for people to have expectations in terms of what they believe an audit should deliver. It would be true to say, and it is not just in Ireland but across the world, that audits are quite limited in their scope. Audits indicate first, that financial statements have been prepared in accordance with rules and, second, that there is evidence these loans exist and so on. It is important to have a relatively low expectation of what an audit is meant to be delivering and then to look for other mechanisms that would blow the whistle on things such as a financial regulator.