Joe O'Toole (Independent)

That is the reality, no matter what amount of auditing we put in place. When auditing was established in Victorian times, the function of the auditor was described as that of a watchdog, not a bloodhound. That is the reality. An auditor can only deal with the information he or she is given. If there is a lack of information, for example, where one bank does not reveal major transfers or another bank orders all its senior executives not to disclose certain fundamental facts about significant transactions, that is governance. No auditor will ever find that. It does not matter how strong the auditing system is if there is not good governance. Good governance means people being confident enough to say, "I do not actually understand this; explain it to me again", and, after hearing the explanation, saying, "I still do not understand that - can you spell it out for me?" Until we have people like that on the boards of banks we will never make the system work.