Mr. Ronan Murphy:

Yes, thank you, Chairman, good morning and good morning also to the members of the committee of inquiry. Can I firstly say that I and my colleague here on my right, John McDonnell, welcome this opportunity on behalf of PwC to meet with the committee this morning and to assist you in your work. Chairman, in your letter to me of 6 May you allocated a time period for me to read my opening statement. I don't anticipate that I will require all of that time but I would nonetheless like to make some opening remarks.

Chairman, in your introductory remarks you outlined a brief biography of my career and I won't repeat this. However, I would like to make some comments around my role and function as senior partner of PwC. My main role is to act as the CEO of the firm on behalf of the partners. This is a role I've held since 1 July 2007, as you've mentioned, and from which I will step down on 30 June next. We currently have 95 partners in the Republic of Ireland firm, over 2,000 staff and revenue in the Republic of Ireland of €230 million for the year ended 31 December 2014. In terms of clients, my principal role is to ensure we have appropriate systems in place to make sure that we deploy suitably experienced and senior partners to carry out specific client assignments. On the risk and quality side, the senior partner has a very key role to ensure we have effective client acceptance and retention controls in place and also that there is adequate support in place for partners dealing with higher risk situations and making critical professional judgments.

PwC Ireland is a member of the PwC global network and in that context the senior partner's role is to ensure that new practices and procedures-----