Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Gerry Fitzpatrick:

I guess the first thing in a qualified audit report, a management letter is an output for the audit, separate to the qualification ... potential qualification in the set of accounts.

I mean, things that would cause a qualification to a set of accounts would be inappropriate standards or inappropriate measures. Clearly we would have discussions but there was certainly no record, and my information, if I had had some dispute with management, would have been recorded in my audit summary presented to the audit committee. There were no such instances of me saying I was in disagreement with the organisation. And then, I guess, the next process which you mention is the management letter, I mean ... in a management letter, we make disclosure of any material items in a ... from a control perspective, that haven't already been identified by the organisation. So we would have had, and observed, certain significant issues. In relation to the 2007-2008 period, there was an integration process that was ongoing, there was issues raised in relation to control environments and what we say in our management letter is that ... what we are raising ... we would raise, would be items that haven't already been reported to management. Therefore those issues were clearly of concern to us in terms of our audit process, in terms of understanding how those had been dealt with, what impact they might have on financial records, what the response to group internal audit ... findings have been and to be able to establish whether those issues were giving cause of concern for the actual measurement of assets or liabilities, and if we had had serious concerns on other matters, not reported by internally, we would have put them in that ... in a management letter.