Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 20 May 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Ronan Murphy:

I'd get onto that, if I may. The fees for the period we are talking about here, which is 31 March 2009, as disclosed in the statutory accounts, are €8.4 million. That is the correct figure. The figure that is included here includes a number of fees that were not directly related to our audit of Bank of Ireland and there were two major elements there and I'll just take a moment to explain it if I may.

In situations where the bank is a participant in bank syndicates, there is sometimes a requirement, if the loan is impaired or if there is issues around the loan, to carry out independent business reviews. That is a decision for the syndicate. It is not a decision for the Bank of Ireland. It is a decision for the syndicate or it may well be a decision for the directors. Approximately €7.2 million of that €15.2 million was in respect of these independent business reviews. They were not contingent, they were not part of our audit fees and they were not ... it was not dependent on us being auditors to Bank of Ireland. They are entirely independent and separate.

There is a second element of it, Deputy, which is €4.4 million of fees, where the Bank of Ireland acted as asset manager for some very big international funds. Examples would be Guggenheim; BIAM. Those fees were paid by those funds to PwC but they were not dependent on a relationship with the Bank of Ireland. The decision to appoint PwC was a decision for the boards and the trustees of those funds. So, the vast majority of that €15.2 million is not ... is totally unrelated to our role as Bank of Ireland auditors. The correct fee for non-audit fees is as disclosed in the accounts, which is €700,000, which is €400,000 for tax fees in Ireland and €300,000 for tax fees in ... outside of Ireland, which was mainly in the UK.

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