Sir, – The late Howard Kilroy’s description of an accountants as, “ One whose eyes are fixed firmly on the past as he backs confidently into the future”, explains a lot.
These are the people whose skills in auditing financial institutions and others during the Celtic Tiger craziness missed the collapse of the construction industry and the banks.
This combined with poor government financial management left us with the highest per capita debt in the euro zone and the third-highest in the world after the US and Japan. With this record, why are accountancy companies the default go-to people when this Government now wants to assess something that has gone wrong, such as the unanticipated rising costs of the new national children’s hospital? – Yours, etc,
DONAL O’BROLCÁIN,
Dublin 9.