Mr. Kevin Prendergast:

Yes, it is a real problem. If we look at some of the statistics in our annual profile of the profession that we release every year, it tells that story. Small and medium practitioners are increasingly a declining number. If we look at the experience in the UK, which is probably a few years ahead of us, they reached a tipping point and the numbers declined significantly. What we have here in Ireland is other regulated sectors, such as the local credit unions and charities and things which require an audit. If we look at many small and medium practitioners, that is why they are maintaining their audit certificate. It is a difficult one. In the case of most of those, their direct relationship is with their professional body. In fairness to the provisional bodies, to their credit they work an awful lot with their small- and medium-sized practitioner groups to try to give whatever assistance they can but, going back to our initial point, there is an inevitability around the burden of doing high-quality audit and a cost applies.