Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform needs to get involved with the oversight and compliance regimes of the audit sector. Are the penalties sufficient? The penalties imposed between July and October appear to be minuscule compared to what happened among the larger accountancy firms in their preparation of banks' accounts. There are delays to the investigation of the claims of inadequate standards in Irish accounting. We have an extremely large bill which has set the country back. Is the quality assurance regime adequate and will the sector bear it?

Some of the activities are not investigated because they are not covered by the specified categories of companies. We cannot investigate the accountants for Newbridge Credit Union because it was not a listed company. Apparently Irish Nationwide Building Society fell into a similar category. We have to find a mechanism to assist us as parliamentarians in bringing these issues to the fore and showing our constituents that we are acting to deal with the abuses in this area. We are within a month of the sixth year of the crisis. Can the rest of Irish society bear the cost of inadequate quality assurance and penalties?

In a context whereby the authority is feeling constrained and has entered into discussions with the Department, very little has happened in the case of large companies since 2008 and considerable sums of the taxpayers' money have been paid out, I am tabling this amendment to strengthen the Government's hand by getting around the problem of delays in public ventilation of what is probably the most serious issue in our finances. Perhaps this will be the game changer because what we have done thus far has been expensive and has not satisfied the public in respect of regulation of financial services in Ireland. Yesterday we were debating a bailout of pension funds and last week we were discussing credit unions. In 2008, we were bailing out the banks. We have lost all our building societies. I would like all of these issues to be addressed by the authority in front of the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform because the public wants these issues to be ventilated.