Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Okay. Well, let's pursue it a little bit. Maybe Mr. O'Rourke, with yourself. In your opening written statement, or ... that you provided us, you said: "One of the key steps in an audit is to assess the risks arising from the business model and strategies followed." Right? An audit is to assess the risks arising from the business model and strategies followed.

You then went on and you said, ''[The auditor] is required to form an opinion as to whether the consequences of those strategies and models are properly reflected in the financial statements in accordance with [regulations, essentially]. Now, you go on, "While it is now clear that the business models and property-related lending strategies of the Irish institutions led to large losses being incurred, it was only when it became likely that property prices would decrease and that the economy would contract that the consequences of these were permitted to be reflected in the financial statements." Now, does that suggest, Mr. O'Rourke, that you would ... you could have seen, and perhaps you did see, risks arising from the business models and strategies that you could have had perhaps serious concerns about those but that there was no mechanism for reporting that in a significant way?