Professor Eamonn Walsh:

We were using UK accounting standards prior to 2005. My sense is that the differences are not that great and if one wished to research the topic further, when the bank switched they were required to do a reconciliation for old GAAP to new GAAP. I had a look at two of the largest banks at the time and the differences are not that great in terms of moving from local Irish GAAP to the application of IAS. There were largely similar views of the world.