of audits of publicly quoted companies is being taken out of the hands of professional accounting bodies and transferred to the state's auditing watchdog. The move of the role to an independent, state-run body is seen as a more stringent approach to enforcing audit standards. This follows on from an EU recommendation that member states needed to up their game in the monitoring of public interest bodies.

The next month Irish accountancy firms and auditors who worked with the Irish banks during the previous three years were barred from