Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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56. To ask the Minister for Finance the audit and consultancy fees paid by his Department and agencies or bodies attached to or under the remit of his Department to companies (details supplied) in each of the years since 2009; the percentage of audit consultancy fees that these payments represented; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52500/18]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The details of the audit & consultancy fees paid by the department to KPMG, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and PriceWaterhouseCooper in each of the years since 2009 are provided in the following table:

Of the seventeen bodies under the aegis of my Department, I am informed that six have not made payments in respect of audit and consultancy services to the specified companies since 2009. These are the Credit Union Advisory Committee, the Disabled Drivers Medical Board of Appeal, the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, the Irish Financial Services Appeals Tribunal and the Credit Union Restructuring Board (ReBo). While ReBo made no audit and consultancy payments during the period in question, a payment was made by this Department for €69,937.80 in 2018 to KPMG for professional services relating to the wind-down of ReBo in 2017.

The Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) and the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (SBCI) were not in a position to provide the information requested in the time available. Therefore I will make arrangements to provide a response with respect to these three bodies in line with Standing Orders. 

Details provided by the remaining seven bodies are in the following table.

*The Central Bank of Ireland, in support of its mandate, engages external vendors as required for a range of specialist services. Fees incurred can also include the provision of services to the Central Bank such as the provision of services in support of IT functions. A significant portion of fees incurred are in turn recovered from the banks or wider industry.

** Fees disclosed for ICCL all relate to statutory audit services. ICCL would have incurred fees in relation to the certification of claims in accordance with the Investor Compensation Act, 1998 from individuals who are partners of PWC and KPMG. However, ICCL do not consider those fees to be consultancy as they relate to a statutory role and the appointment is made by the Court and not ICCL.

*** While KPMG have been paid significant fees from the liquidation of IBRC, these do not constitute either audit or consultancy fees so have not been included.