Accounting firms don't come more prestigious than PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). But the company faced damning criticism last Thursday from three figures central to its report into a £36 million overrun on a CIE rail signalling project.
Mr Brian Powell, Ms Mary Hand and Mr Bernard Kernan left the rail company to join Modern Networks Ltd (MNL), the key contractor on an incomplete signalling plan whose cost spiralled to £50 million from a projected £14 million. When called before a sub-committee of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport investigating the overrun on an agreed contract worth £15.7 million, they vehemently rejected as "fundamentally flawed" the two PwC reports that led to the inquiry.
Mr Powell claimed the PwC report was the work of "rank amateurs". His colleagues - Ms Hand, a solicitor who drew up the signalling contract for the rail company, and Mr Kernan, a signalling engineer - said the reports were incomplete, inaccurate and unfair.
Questioning why they had not been interviewed by PwC, they said it was the first opportunity they had to respond to a study that had featured in media reports for a year. PwC's position, outlined in hearings on Tuesday, was that the report was prepared in contemplation of litigation. It would have been detrimental to CIE's interests if persons no longer with the group were interviewed.
But Mr Powell said: "The broad allegation against me personally appears to be that as I previously worked in CIE and Iarnrod Eireann and now work in MNL this meant that there was some wrongdoing on my part while I worked in CIE and Iarnrod Eireann. This is false and it's demonstrably false."
He cited evidence given on Tuesday by two senior PwC accountants, Mr Michael O'Neill and Mr Billy O'Riordan, who said they did not seek outside engineering expertise in compiling their report. "Mr O'Neill and Mr O'Riordan, in my view, are amateurs. They are rank amateurs in the context in which they prepared this report and they are demonstrably so, and so by their own admissions."
Of PwC's investigations, Mr Kernan said: "Both the PwC detailed report and final report are totally inaccurate in very many respects. They demonstrate extraordinary ignorance from a signal engineering perspective."
Such assertions were later rejected by counsel for PwC, Mr Maurice Collins, who told the inquiry the company was "very concerned at the content and tone of the statements made by certain witnesses". "This is not an investigation into PwC."
The sub-committee's chairman, Mr Sean Doherty TD, agreed. That a telecoms network constructed for Esat Telecom on the railway appears to have added significantly to the cost will be of more than passing interest as the weeks proceed.
Of immediate concern, however, were the explanations offered by Mr Powell and his colleagues for the overruns. Most commentary has confined attribution of the cost increases to Esat's parallel work; they offered a different perspective.
Apart from the Esat project, Mr Kernan said there were three other contributing factors: revised safety requirements; prolongation linked to Iarnrod Eireann's inability to produce certain plans and documents; and additional Iarnrod Eireann enhancements and operations flexibility requirements.
Mr Powell also cited "scope" and "specification" increases, which together raised costs by £32.9 million. "In my view the vast majority of these additional costs would have arisen regardless of which contractor was engaged to carry out the works."
Ms Hand said she joined MNL on the basis that she could not offer the company legal advice on its relationship with Iarnrod Eireann. She rejected suggestions that the contract she drew up was flawed. "The intent of the contract was to protect Iarnrod Eireann and that is exactly what it did."