Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I hope the transport plans announced today will be some advance on Transport 21, which was announced approximately ten years ago by the last Government. I see a headline today, "Revealed: The 19-Minute Journey from Dublin City to the Airport by Metro." Buses, without subsidy, can currently go from the airport to Lucan or Sandymount in 20 minutes, so I do not know what this is supposed to serve. These projects tend to be dominated by engineers who spend all the money. The country was bankrupted before, and we would want to be pretty careful; the devil will be in the detail. What has been published so far seems to be a reheated version of a plan that was not much good when we saw it the first time approximately ten years ago.

I note the proposal by Ernst & Young in the Sunday Independentthat it will drop degree requirements for people studying to be auditors and accountants. The rest of us have a rather different view of auditors and accountants. Next year, the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority takes over the supervision of standards in accountancy and auditing from Chartered Accountants Ireland. That transfer will take place in June. It would be ill-advised, given the problems we have had with auditing in the financial and building society sector, as well as in banking, to have any changes to reduce the qualifications of auditors before the transfer to the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority. It is a matter of a regret that it has taken so long since the financial crisis to transfer the supervision of accountants from their own body to an independent statutory body, the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority.