Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Gerry Fitzpatrick:
I would say, from a personal perspective, there is nothing in the ethic of our firm, or my personal ethic which caused me to produce a report that I didn't agree with. So as a personal perspective, I have an ethical responsibility, a professional responsibility to be clear in my audits. In terms of bias caused by other commercial relationships, that is a risk and I think our profession is very clear in terms of how you ... how that risk should be mitigated in terms of separation of teams, separation of responsibilities, having clear guidance and ultimately ... having the audit community of the organisation approve any non-audit services. We don't certainly set out our pricing on our contractual arrangements in relation to audit in contemplation of any other fee because that would be both unethical and unwise, and obviously a lot of audit committees have parameters where they would restrict the amount of non-audit fees and regulation will change that a little bit further in the future.
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