Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Public Accounts Committee

HEA - Financial Statement 2015

10:00 am

Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

It is used. We do rely on it. Each year we have to examine the work that they have done and satisfy ourselves that it is adequate for our purposes. What we have tried to do is to work with those auditors. We have a very good agreement and arrangement in place with Trinity College where, effectively, the planning is done in parallel, the audits are done in parallel, and we try to finish at more or less the same time. We are completing the audit there within six months on both sides. With others, it is more problematic.