Vol. 493 No. 3
16 Mr. Ferris asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the proposals, if any, she has to introduce legislation to regulate the accountancy profession in Ireland in view of the scale of recent allegations regarding illegalities in the practice of that profession. [15912/98]
Auditor regulation is delegated at present to six accountancy bodies which are individually recognised by our Department under section 191 of the Companies Act, 1990. Arising from the findings of the McCracken Tribunal report last year, one of these bodies, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, ICAI, decided to establish a committee of inquiry to investigate a number of its members. In order to allow us to review on an independent basis the deliberations of the committee of inquiry, we amended the institute's terms of recognition last October so as to secure unrestricted access to its proceedings by an official of our Department. Subsequently, we added a similar condition to our recognition of the other accountancy bodies. We have also taken a number of other initiatives in relation to the profession. At our request, all recognised accountancy bodies have agreed to report suspected breaches of the Companies Acts which come to their attention during the course of their disciplinary proceedings to our Department.
I have also requested each recognised accountancy body to provide to our Department a standard and more detailed set of statistical and other information in its annual reports for 1998 and subsequent years, particularly in relation to its investigation of complaints against those members practising as auditors in the State. These returns will be critically evaluated by our Department to enable us to assess the performance of each of the recognised accountancy bodies in this important area.
Our dissatisfaction with the obvious inadequacies of the present regime of self-regulation is well known. At the same time, many of the recognised accounting bodies have acknowledged to us that their disciplinary procedures require revision to achieve greater openness and transparency. We are pleased that at our prompting, a number of the accounting bodies have already revised their procedures in this area. At the end of the day however, we will judge the effectiveness of these arrangements by the level of penalties, which are applied in cases of serious misconduct. In this context, the ongoing work of the ICAI's committee of inquiry will be an important test of the merits, or otherwise, of self-regulation in the accountancy profession.
I am also conscious that the Moriarty Tribunal of Inquiry is required to address in its deliberations the effective regulation of the accountancy profession. We intend that our Department will seek limited representation at the tribunal at an appropriate time to address these and other matters of relevance to company law. The Deputy can be assured that we will not hesitate to take appropriate action if such becomes necessary, in order to restore public confidence in the accountancy profession.
