Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

Yes. The principle here is that a person exercising an independent function such as an external or internal audit should be given information that allows them to exercise their independence. If one does not know about something, one cannot take it into account when one exercises one's function. If the question is being put at a senior level in an organisation about whether they should tell the Comptroller and Auditor General about something, that is the time to tell. They might only be telling partial information but it gives the external auditor - in that case, me, as Comptroller and Auditor General - the power to assess the information that is available to identify any action we might recommend.