Chartered Accountants Ireland (CAI) chief executive Rosemary Keogh has taken the helm at the professional body at a time of widespread change across the accountancy industry.
A wave of consolidation has swept up several firms, large and small. New technologies, not least artificial intelligence (AI), and their trustworthiness are also coming into focus.
Meanwhile, CAI itself is transforming, having joined forces with Certified Public Accountants (CPA) Ireland last year to create the largest professional body on the island of Ireland.
Keogh, whose career has taken her from the charities sector to Leinster House and now to CAI, tells The Irish Times that she was prepared to face a “very steep learning curve” when she took on the job in the summer.
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“I knew when I was coming in that there was a lot of change,” she says. “Over the space of the last probably 18 months, the whole leadership team [at CAI] has changed. So that’s big. A lot of my energy and effort [has gone into] developing that team.”
The Dubliner, who qualified as an accountant in her mid-20s, hasn’t practised for many years but says her education set her up for the executive career she has carved out for herself. After working in industry, including a couple of multinationals, an unexpected redundancy in 2009 set her on a totally different path in life.
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Keogh established herself in the charities sector, working first for Debra Ireland and the Order of Malta before joining the Irish Wheelchair Association as chief executive in 2016. Most recently, she was appointed as the assistant secretary general in the Houses of the Oireachtas with responsibility over corporate and member services in 2023.
“I did find adjusting to the Civil Service quite challenging,” Keogh admits. “I knew going in I wasn’t going to be the number one person. […] I’m not saying that it’s better or it’s worse than being in the private sector or whatever, but it is different. And if I’m really honest, I missed the autonomy of being able to make decisions.”
When the CAI job came up, she says she was drawn to the “scale of the change” within the institute and across the industry.
“We’ve had the amalgamation, the new leadership team, and we are well into our digital transformation. We have a new strategy. We have a new brand. And that tag line of trusted business leadership, there was something about it that really said to me that this could be fun.”
The wider accounting industry is also in the grips of a wave of change, with the likes of Grant Thornton Ireland merging its non-audit advisory and tax business with its US sister firm earlier this year.
A merger between BDO Ireland and UK is also in the offing. Meanwhile, the small-to-mid-tier Irish accounting sector has seen a surge in deal-making in the past two years as overseas firms, often backed by private equity money, seek to tap into the EU’s fastest-growing economy.
Keogh says she hopes the consolidation within the industry will increase the supply of auditors in the Irish market. However, she says CAI has to be aware of the downside, too.
“I guess there’s a risk, if you’ve got maybe big players coming in, they may want to reduce costs, so you’ve got a question, is that going to impact on quality? We haven’t seen that yet, but it’s something to be mindful of for the industry.”
New technologies, their implementation and their impact on audit quality is also open question across the wider industry. The Financial Times reported in July that the six largest accounting firms in the UK do not formally monitor how automated and AI tools impact the quality of their audits, despite the technology’s ever-growing usage across the industry.
“You can see already where AI has been used in lots of industries, probably to great effect, but unregulated,” Keogh says. “I think there is a role for regulation because otherwise, you get into what’s real and what’s not.”
Meanwhile, Keogh says accountants have done a lot to repair their reputations since the 2008 financial crisis and the near collapse of the Irish banking sector.
“I do think it’s in a strong place,” she says of the industry’s reputation. “I would also say it’s critically important that we maintain that so there can be no slippage, there can be no eye off the ball.”
On that front, Keogh says the establishment of the Irish Auditing & Accounting Supervisory Authority (IASSA) has been crucial. The State body assumed responsibility for the auditing of so-called public interest entities – such as banks, insurers and companies whose shares or debt are listed on a stock exchange – in 2016. While the professional bodies like CAI continue to investigate and discipline their own members, IASSA runs the rule over their procedures and can impose sanctions if standards are not met.
The body has changed the industry landscape, Keogh says. It has meant that CAI’s focus on regulation is “not as broad” as it once was, “and I think hopefully that has given the public more trust in the industry”.
Still, at least one important overhang from the crisis era remains, that of CAI’s disciplinary case in respect of EY and its handling of the audit function for Anglo Irish Bank. The inquiry started in 2009 and was followed by an external report by former comptroller and auditor general John Purcell for the accountancy body in 2011, which concluded there was a prima facie case that EY was liable to disciplinary action. EY rejects the findings of Purcell’s report, which was shelved in 2011 pending the outcome of criminal proceedings against former Anglo executives.
Despite the trials having concluded more than seven years ago, there is no sign of the disciplinary case, barring a €1.5 million provision in CAI’s latest annual report for ongoing cases.
Keogh won’t be drawn on whether she expects to see the matter concluded during her term. “It’s a tricky one to talk about because we have a set of processes set up, and anything to do with public concern and those processes sit independently,” she says.
“So, I’m not going to talk about that specifically. I would say in the area of public concern more generally, I think reputationally, for ourselves and for our members, it’s important that we’re seen to do a good job.”
