Our annual Audit & Risk Committee Chairpersons' Roundtable provides an important peer-to-peer forum for the consideration of common issues, opportunities and challenges facing Audit & Risk Committees in public bodies and public benefit entities.
We will convene in-person this year and consider, amongst other matters, the work, value-add and issues arising in respect of internal audit and external audit. This will include:
Internal audit: traditional role, potential and opportunities
Service provision to the ARC: in-house internal audit and contracted-in internal audit
External audit: common issues arising in OCAG audits
Key issues and themes from the perspective of OCAG
ARC Chairs are also encouraged to raise any other matters, audit-related or otherwise, that they would like to discuss with their peers.
Our guest speakers for the event will be:
Andy Harkness, Director of Audit, Office of the Comptroller & Auditor General
Dr Kevin De Barra, Assistant Chief Executive, Health & Safety Authority and author of Understanding the Internal Audit Function in the Irish Public Sector (2023)
Speakers
Andy Harkness
Andrew is Director of Audit at the Office of the Comptroller & Auditor General (OCAG), with responsibility for financial audits in the semi-state, health, education and financial sectors. He is also responsible for the audit contracting programme and the Office’s standards unit and audit insights programme. He is currently an observer on INTOSAI’s financial audit and accounting sub-committee.
Andy has previously worked on a variety of audit portfolios at OCAG including the audit of central government departments and State bodies, and was previously Accounting Officer for the Office. He has specialised in governance, financial audit methodologies and financial reporting and auditing standards. He also served as a member of the Board of Audit of the European Stability Mechanism.
Dr Kevin De Barra
Kevin is Assistant Chief Executive Officer at the Health and Safety Agency (HSA), with responsibility for corporate services, which comprises people and organisational development, finance, ICT, facilities, communications, legislation and corporate governance, procurement, strategic management including risk management, FOI, quality assurance and internal audit.
Kevin is author of Understanding the Internal Audit Function in the Irish Public Sector (2023), which arose from his primary research on the role, evolution and value-add of internal audit in 127 public sector bodies.
Prior to the HSA, Kevin was Head of Corporate and Communication Services at the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman, and was also previously Head of Corporate Services at the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission.
