Is an auditor/accountant suable if aware a client company is trading recklessly and reneges on informing authorities ?

T McGibney said:

The Institutes have been lobbying for years for this but the State doesn't want to know. All I've done here is speculate why.

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I see.

Maybe accountants need to build a wider consensus from the wider society. Simply doing something called for by accountants is unlikely to motivate politicians - moreover after the Haughey/Caymans scandal.

The wider society prefer to continue to enjoy the option of a cheap bookkeeper or accounts service especially if they don't particularly want or need to pay an accredited professional for a professional service.

I don't know what your point is about Haughey and the Caymans.

Most bookkeepers today have accounting technician status and maybe tax technician too.

For simply keeping the books, bookkeepers are the answer. This is the practice of accountants as well as Joe Sixpack. One can hardly expect to earn the full professional ICA/IPU/ICCA rate for simply keeping books and holding the ACA/CPU/ACCA qual. An accountant's main job is to interpret the figures in the context of the business.

T McGibney said:

I don't know what your point is about Haughey and the Caymans.

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A lot of the swindlers involved in the Guinness Mahon-Cayman Trust accounts scandal (Haughey, Traynor, Collery, etc) were accountants. The wider public were dismayed at - inter alia - the accountants' conduct. Politicians always seek to deflect ignominy off themselves to other people. There were a few articles and TV commentaries at the time of the scandal that were very cynical about accountants. I think that a lot of this remains in the public consciousness when accountants are under discussion.

A practising accountant's main job isn't to interpret figures, sorry.

Haughey and Traynor were gone out of the accountancy profession before I was born, and I'm no longer young.

Padraig Collery was a banker, not an accountant.

And I still don't know why you raised them in the course of this discussion. Is this weird thread merely an attempt to troll?

T McGibney said:

A practising accountant's main job isn't to interpret figures, sorry.

Haughey and Traynor were gone out of the accountancy profession before I was born, and I'm no longer young.

Who is/was Colley?

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Just add them up, calculate taxes and assign one's fee ? That's bookkeeper stuff to most people.

H and T were gone as far as balancing the books was concerned. But they had used the ACA qualification in advancing their business/law/political careers.

Collery - my mistake. He was one of the players during the tribunal into all this stuff. Paying H's personal expenses or whatnot.

"Just add them up, calculate taxes and assign one's fee ? That's bookkeeper stuff to most people."

That's not what I said.
You have strong opinions about accountancy practice but seem to know precious little about it.

"H and T were gone as far as balancing the books was concerned. But they had used the ACA qualification in advancing their business/law/political careers."

Tell me more about how an accountancy qualification advances a career in politics or law.
And when the ICAI tried to discipline Haughey when his corruption was exposed, they couldn't as he hadn't even paid his membership for decades previously.


"Collery - my mistake. He was one of the players during the tribunal into all this stuff. Paying H's personal expenses or whatnot."

Still not an accountant and never was.

I think we're done here.

pointless thread at this stage.