Madam,

In response to the ‘clarification statement’ by Eilis Quinlan in The Irish Field on 3/11/18, we believe it necessary now to also make a clarifying statement.

Mrs Quinlan’s reference to “criticism of the Connaught Region in particular” relates to issues which arose in her SJI Audit preparation long before this 2018 SJI Connaught Region Committee was in place.

We accept Mrs Quinlan’s view that worrying corporate governance issues have occurred in the SJI, but as important information in her numerous Audit Management Letters to the SJI Board had been hidden from the Board of Directors and hadn’t been disclosed at Connaught Region either, members of this committee heard for the first time at a meeting with Mrs Quinlan in April 2018 of criticism she had leveled in the past at the Connaught Region and the SJI Association in general.

The committee wish to put the following on record. The 2018 SJI Connaught Region Committee has never breached the Companies Act and has followed good corporate governance in all matters.

The 2018 SJI Committee in the Connaught Region has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the SJI Executive Committee and Mrs Quinlan have been made aware of further increasingly alarming facts which have emerged from the committee’s own review of records from previous years which followed the failure to have the Connaught Region accounts adopted at the regional AGM in 2017.

Breaches of the Companies Act and absence of good corporate governance were in evidence and cash in excess of €51,000 went unaccounted for in the period reviewed.

All facts which emerged from the review were made available to Mrs Quinlan and the SJI company secretary but to our surprise the recently audited SJI 2017 accounts do not include any reference to these facts.

SJI Members will be updated on the results of this review at the SJI Connaught Region 2018 AGM scheduled for December.

As strict compliance with the Companies Act 2014, good corporate governance has been in force in the SJI Connaught Region throughout 2018. No issues whatsoever are anticipated in the completion of the 2018 accounts for audit by the new treasurer and his colleagues on the committee.

We share Mrs Quinlan’s view that written notice to her of the appointment of RBK as SJI Auditor should have been given in a timely fashion and are, as a committee, embarrassed by this lack of courtesy to Mrs Quinlan.

Yours etc,

Connaught Region SJI Committee 2018

Eilis Quinlan replies: Quinlan & Co conducts all its audits in accordance with the Companies Act 2014 and the International Standards on Auditing (Ireland) (ISA’s). The ‘Audit Findings Letter’ provided to the chairman and directors of the SJAI at the conclusion of the audit contains details of all errors and omissions found during the course of the audit. Whether they then distribute this down through the regions or not, is a matter of internal SJAI procedures.