Seanad debates
Wednesday, 16 April 2003
Companies (Auditing and Accounting) Bill 2003: Second Stage.
I have sympathy with the view of members of the DIRT sub-committee that the provisions for the independence of auditors are not as thorough as they should be. There is a compelling case for saying auditors should not do non-audit work for the same company. I know that there is a process in the Bill whereby there is a requirement on companies to note the non-audit work done by auditors in a particular year and, for that matter, the preceding year. I wonder whether that will be sufficient to establish the independence of auditors. As I was not part of the independent review group, I do not know what the argument was. I suspect it ran something along the lines that there were so few big accountancy firms in the country that it would be impossible to enforce a rule whereby one could not have the same company – I will not name any – doing all sorts of work for the same firm. Nonetheless, the principle is an extremely important one because the conflict of interest is self-evident to everybody. If one is working for a company, it is not in one's interest to start pointing to faults in the way it does things. Unfortunately, although one might say good practice and professional ethics should dictate otherwise, there have been all too many examples where accountancy firms have been reluctant to do even what would be their statutory duty in other jurisdictions. I am not totally convinced that the section 42 procedure set out in the Bill will be sufficient to have the effect that we want it to have.
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