Mr. Dargan Fitzgerald:

Well, I have a couple of reactions to the commentary. First of all, I suppose it is very much a summarised reaction and, I might say, a personal reaction in terms of the quality of the comment, and I think, in terms of the role of external auditor, it's probably not something I would immediately move to agree or disagree with. I kind of feel it's that person's opinion, and, you know, they're absolutely entitled to have that. I do know that the role of professional scepticism has come into some particular focus since the financial crisis and, in the context of the work of this committee and of similar work groups across the world reacting to the financial crisis, there has been a very explicit move to increase both the exercise of scepticism, which has always been an important and, you might say, necessary attitude of mind of external auditors and of auditing firms, but to improve both the rigour of challenge to management and management's judgment. And in that context, I would mention a project in the external auditing world called clarified ISAs, international standards on auditing. They were, after the financial crisis, updated to improve the level of specificity of some of their required audit procedures, and some of those related to exactly that point - scepticism. So I feel the general matter of challenge and scepticism is integral to external auditing and always has been, and I do feel there have been improvements in enabling those challenges to management judgment and the exercise of scepticism being deployed more fully.