Two of the most significant changes proposed in FRED 82, the FRC’s second periodic review of FRS 102, concern leasing and revenue. Mike O’Halloran delves into the details Financial Reporting Standard 102 (FRS 102) landed on the scene over 10 years ago to much fanfare.  Its introduction was a sizeable task which involved replacing all previously extant Financial Reporting Standards, Statements of Standard Accounting Practice and Urgent Issues Task Force Abstracts in Ireland and the UK, with the single financial reporting standard we now know as FRS 102.  In tandem, a reduced disclosure framework and framework for micro entities were born. The replacement of the previously extant mismatch of accounting standards with a single framework was a seismic task, but a necessary one.  It enabled users of financial statements to receive high-quality and understandable financial information, which had a consistency with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), whilst being proportionate and cost-effective for entities to apply. Periodic review One of the cornerstones of FRS 102, and other standards maintained by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), such as FRS 105, is that they are subject to periodic review at least every five years. Periodic reviews allow the FRC to consider what is and isn’t working in the current standard, whether there are any emerging issues that need to be addressed, and whether there are any changes at International Accounting Standard (IAS) level that should be considered for inclusion.  In December 2022, the FRC released Financial Reporting Exposure Draft 82 (FRED 82). FRED 82 sets out the FRC’s proposed changes as part of the second periodic review of the standard, including incremental improvements and clarifications. This article focuses on two key changes proposed in FRED 82 to Leasing and Revenue. FRED 82 and leasing Arguably the most significant change proposed in the periodic review is to lease accounting. The FRC has proposed, in FRS 102 only, a lease accounting regime consistent with IFRS 16 - Leases, which was introduced at International Accounting Standards (IAS) level in 2019.  So, why is a change to the way in which entities account for leases deemed necessary by the FRC?  It is a widely held view that “on-balance sheet” accounting for lessees provides a more faithful representation of leasing transactions and therefore provides more useful information to users of financial statements.  The current requirements for lessees—whereby entities first must distinguish whether a lease is “operating” or “financing”—can result in leases, which are quite similar being accounted for very differently.  This is especially relevant where there is a significant level of judgement used in determining the lease classification.  In addition to this, leases currently classified as operating leases are accounted for in a manner that understates the lessee’s level of indebtedness on the balance sheet, as well as the value of assets an entity has the right to use.  The change is also intended to improve comparability for users of financial statements. This includes comparability between entities that apply IFRS to those that apply FRS 102. However, it also includes comparability between entities that apply FRS 102 while also acquiring assets in different ways—an entity that obtains a bank loan to buy an asset, for example, or leases an asset for a set number of years. Opponents of the change may argue that the proposed leasing changes are not appropriate for smaller entities—or that the increase in assets caused by bringing right-of-use assets into fixed assets may cause a change in the size of some companies, which could have other implications (such as a loss of audit exemption). IFRS 16 has now been in operation at IAS level since 2019 and, after a number of years of implementation, would appear to be operating well.  The FRC has indicated that, based on its communications from stakeholders to date, there is strong support for the accounting rules of IFRS 16 to be introduced into FRS 102, provided that the standard offers simplifications in certain areas to make it appropriate and cost-effective for SMEs to apply. The FRC has responded by including some simplifications within FRED 82. These include: The use of discount rates which should be easier to determine; A reduction in the number of situations in which lease modifications will require a new discount rate; The option to apply IFRS 16 in full (which may benefit entities who report up to a parent preparing in IFRS); The retention of the short lease exemption and low value exemption, with guidance in the standard on how to apply these; and A simplified transition method, using the modified retrospective approach. While big changes are proposed for entities with leases under FRS 102, the FRC has decided not to incorporate these changes into FRS 105. It has noted that there was significant concern that the requirements would be too complicated for micro-entities, and that the costs of implementing the changes would exceed the benefits. FRED 82 and Revenue The periodic review proposes that the current Section 23 - Revenue be rewritten entirely and replaced with a single comprehensive framework based on five steps of revenue recognition.  In addition, it is proposed that the appendix to Section 23 be removed. These measures are intended to align the revenue recognition requirements in FRS 102 and FRS 105 with those of IFRS 15-Revenue from Contracts with Customers (IFRS 15), which has been in effect at IAS level since 2018. In explaining its rationale for proposing this change, the FRC highlighted in its basis for conclusion in FRED 82, that the changes made to IFRS 15 were “developed to provide a single comprehensive framework for revenue recognition and to remove certain inconsistencies and weaknesses in the previous revenue standards that IFRS 15 replaced”.  The FRC also highlighted the fact that IFRS 15 accounting provided more useful information to users of financial statements. The feedback it received from stakeholders was generally supportive of the introduction of such a model, provided this would be done in a proportionate manner, with appropriate simplifications to ensure the requirements are cost-effective to apply. The proposed amendments will ensure that revenue recognition is focused largely on a five-step model. This means that an entity must apply the following five steps when determining how to account for its revenue: Identify the contract(s) with a customer; Identify the promises in the contract; Determine the transaction price; Allocate the transaction price to the promises in the contract; and Recognise revenue when (or as) the entity satisfies a promise. Impact of proposed changes Many entities may assume (and some may correctly assume) that the proposed changes will not have a significant impact on how they currently measure and recognise their revenue.  However, this would be an inappropriate assumption to make.  Entities will have to consider the nature of the contracts they have in place with their customers in line with the five-step model, in order to establish the appropriate accounting treatment. Unlike leasing, it is intended that the proposed changes to revenue be incorporated into FRS 105, making it the most significant change to that standard.  This is to ensure that a consistent revenue accounting framework applies across the board. However, the changes have been adapted to reflect the legal requirements, size and nature of micro-entities. Some additional notable changes This article does not cover all of the proposed changes detailed in FRED 82, but some other proposed changes include: A redrafted Section 2 – Concepts and Pervasive Principles in FRS 102 and FRS 105 to ensure consistency with the IASB’s Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting; Enhanced going concern disclosures whereby an entity applying FRS 102 must state that it has applied the going concern basis, as well as confirmation that it has considered information about the future in applying the going concern basis; For UK companies only, disclosures which are currently contained in Appendix E of Section 1A (encouraged disclosures) are proposed to be moved to Appendix C (mandatory disclosures); A new Section 2A - Fair Value Measurement, to replace the Appendix to Section 2, reflecting the principles of IFRS 13; A focus, in Section 8 – Notes to the Financial Statements on disclosing “material accounting policy information” rather than “significant accounting policies”. This includes more guidance on when accounting policy information is material; An introduction of the definition of an “Accounting Estimate”; and A removal of the option to newly adopt the measurement and recognition requirements in IAS 39 as currently allowed by Sections 11 and 12 (with a view to its ultimate removal entirely). IFRS for SMEs periodic review It is worth noting that the FRC’s periodic review is ongoing at a time when the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) is carrying out a similar periodic review of its SME standard—the IFRS for SMEs.  FRS 102 was developed from the IFRS for SMEs and, therefore, a change at this level prompts the FRC to strongly consider whether a similar change is required at FRS 102 level.  There are some notable differences between the approach taken by the FRC and IASB.  The IASB has decided not to introduce IFRS 16 leasing rules to its standard, for example, whereas the FRC has (outlined above).  Also, the IASB has decided to align its standard with the expected credit loss model of IFRS whereas the FRC has decided against this, instead deferring its decision on this to a later date. What’s next? FRS 102 covers a lot of ground when it comes to the type, size and complexity of the entities that use it. Users vary from small entities to large—from credit unions to charities and from pharmacies to Premier League Football clubs.  It is a standard that must cover a lot of bases in order to meet the needs of the users of its financial statements.  The FRC highlighted, during its recent 29 March visit to Chartered Accountants House, the importance of engagement from a wide cohort of members to help ensure that all views are taken into consideration when deciding whether the proposed amendments are appropriate.  With this in mind, accountants are advised to familiarise themselves with the proposed changes and consider how these changes might impact their clients.  Anyone who wishes to issue a response to the FRC on FRED 82 can do so via its website. The comment period remains open until 30 April and the FRC has proposed an effective date of accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2025 for the changes. Mike O’Halloran is Technical Manager in the Advocacy and Voice Department of Chartered Accountants Ireland

What will tomorrow bring for the role of the accountant, and what changes are already taking hold today? Accountancy Ireland talks to three young professionals about their experiences and expectations The role of the accountant is evolving and with it the expectations and perceptions of younger generations building careers in the profession. Here, three members of the Institute’s Young Professionals Committee tell us about their hopes, aspirations and experiences so far. Niamh McCarthy Niamh McCarthy is a business partner with Primark, the Irish-owned retail chain. She trained as a Chartered Accountant with Crowe Ireland in Dublin after graduating from UCD in 2014 with a degree in commerce.  “When I was training, I mainly worked in audit, but I also had the opportunity to spend several months in both corporate finance and wealth management,” she says. “I got great experience auditing companies across many sectors such as charities, hotels, pharmaceutical and fashion businesses, which really broadened my horizons.” McCarthy left practice in late 2015 to join Kerry Group where she worked for six years. Her time with the Irish food giant included a two-year stint in North America where she was plant controller at two sites in Seattle and Vancouver. “It was an amazing opportunity that allowed me to realise the long-held dream of living and working abroad,” she says. “Unfortunately my plans changed when COVID-19 hit, like many people. Not only did I decide to move back to Ireland, I felt it was time to chase another dream of mine—working in fashion retail. I applied to Primark and I’m really loving my work here now.” Greater strategic role As McCarthy sees it, accountants are squarely at the forefront of broader commercial strategy and decision-making in business today. “When we look at the role of the accountant in most companies now, we are involved more and more in the commercial side of the business,” says McCarthy. “That is, I think, because our non-finance colleagues have a better understanding of the value we bring to the table. We’re not just seen as the ‘number crunchers’ anymore. “I love it when I’m working on a big project and someone says, ‘we need to make sure finance is included in these discussions’, rather than us having to force ourselves into the conversation or learn things after the fact.” McCarthy also sees much greater emphasis on sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in finance. “Sustainability has thankfully grown in importance in recent years and this is especially evident in the younger generations of our profession,” she says. “Accountants can play a significant role in helping companies achieve their sustainability goals. We’re no longer just the budget gatekeepers. We are involved in day-to-day decision-making.” This active role in business strategy puts accountants at the forefront of efforts to reach ESG targets. “Our ability to be flexible means we can adapt to changing goals,” says McCarthy.  “This shift in attitudes towards accountants and the finance function, combined with greater process automation, will keep accountants right at the forefront of decision-making in business in the years ahead.” Joseph Grant Joseph Grant is an assistant manager in the Financial Accounting Advisory Services Department at Grant Thornton Grant began his training in 2014, aged 18, with Accounting Technicians Ireland (ATI). “When I was 17 doing my A Levels at High School in Co. Down, I was planning on going to university in England when I noticed a poster at school for the ATI apprenticeship with FPM, a local accountancy practice,” he says. “The timing was fortunate for me as I was a carer for my sick mother and this meant I could pursue a professional qualification without having to relocate. The added benefit was earning a salary and having no student debt, which can be quite substantial in Northern Ireland.” Having gotten a distinction in his year-one ATI exams, he then went straight on to his CAP 1 ACA exams with Chartered Accountants Ireland.  “At the time, I was also pursuing a Diploma in Leadership and Management with a local college, which my training firm kindly paid for,” he says. “During CAP 2, I extended this to complete an award in Strategic Management and Leadership, and I passed my FAE exams in 2018 when I was 22.” As he had exemptions from Part 1 of the Irish Tax Institute exams, Grant went on to earn the Chartered Tax Advisor qualification in 2020 and later completed the second year ATI to gain the full MIATI qualification.   After training in practice, he moved into industry for a while, then back to practice. He joined Grant Thornton in 2021. Strong foundation “My qualifications provided a great foundation for my career and equipped me with the knowledge to tackle any technically complicated challenges that come my way,” he says. “One of the biggest shocks for me was just how vast the work an accountant can do is, from preparing tax returns for a small sole trader to company mergers and advisory work, liquidations and systems implementations. “Anyone who has an interest in business will be able to find a niche they truly enjoy through accountancy.” The stereotype of accounting being a ‘boring profession’, with little interaction, couldn’t be farther from the truth.  “Trainees always have the camaraderie of working with people of a similar age and the training firms and professional bodies make a big effort to reward staff and members with fun events and respite from the hard work we do,” says Grant. “It can be a challenging job but there is a strong ethos of mentorship throughout the profession and this is something I really admire.” For young professionals starting out in accountancy in Ireland, Grant sees the ongoing housing crisis and lack of affordable accommodation as a significant disadvantage. “The housing crisis is definitely a challenge for young professionals who grew up here as well as those coming here from abroad,” he says. “Salaries in parts of the country are rising but, for many, house ownership or affordable rent is still out of reach, especially with the recent jump in inflation. I really hope to see this improve in the coming years.” The pandemic has changed the game in terms of how we work and that is unlikely to change in the future, Grant says. “For me personally, hybrid working has improved my work-life balance. There are times when you just don’t need to be in the office, especially if you’re working autonomously on something.  “At the same time, I do still think that in-person contact and interaction with clients and colleagues is important in a service profession like ours.  “From a trainee perspective, being able to just ask someone for help face-to-face is easier than waiting for their Teams status to change to green.” From a technical standpoint, cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are increasingly ‘in the spotlight’ for accountants and auditors, Grant says. “Regulation is increasing in this area and I expect this to continue in the years ahead. Our profession will need to respond to this change and work out how to audit and account for it.” As Grant sees it, a culture of true diversity, equity and inclusivity (DE&I) is essential in today’s working world and employers and individuals alike have a responsibility to create and support a working environment that is fair and ethical for everyone.  “It’s more and more important for employees to feel that they are part of a culture that doesn’t just ‘tolerate’ DE&I, but actively strives to support and improve it,” he says.  “Hand in hand with this is the emergence of ESG, sustainability reporting and greater regulations in this area. It’s important that we all continue to learn and understand these changing requirements.” In the nine years he has been working, Grant has witnessed a significant rise in the use of IT and automation in the profession. “Software now can auto-match transactions, pull data from PDF files, translate in real-time and submit returns directly from accounting systems,” he says. “The recent spotlight on Chat GPT also raises questions on how Artificial Intelligence may change the landscape for our jobs and our clients.” “My prediction is that almost all businesses, big and small, will be virtually paperless and systems will continue to integrate with each other so that information can be shared consistently and transparently between accountants, clients and authorities.” Ciara Cuggy Ciara Cuggy works with Grant Thornton as Associate Director – Financial Services Advisory. Her path to accountancy wasn’t straightforward, however, following the completion of her Leaving Cert in 2009.  “I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped in my Leaving Cert—my parents still blame the TV that was always on while I was studying—and I didn’t have the points I needed to study accountancy as I’d hoped to do.” Instead, Cuggy opted to study engineering at DCU. “Two years into it, I knew I still really wanted to study accounting,” she says. “At that point, I was 20 and I had a bit of an age complex. I didn’t want to stay in college full-time for another three or four years.” The choice was simple, says Cuggy; “I decided to work full-time while studying accounting and finance part-time at Griffith College and finally felt I was doing something I loved.” In 2015, Cuggy applied for a secretarial role with Grant Thornton to get her “foot in the door” while she continued to study. “I actually got turned down for the secretarial role due to a lack of qualifications, but I was offered a role in the risk department while I completed my final year in college and had the option to start the training contract straight after I graduated,” she says.  Cuggy has now been with Grant Thornton for eight years, completing her FAE exams in 2019 and qualifying in 2020.  She has, she says, “grown up” with the firm and, as an Associate Director in the Financial Services Advisory Department, specialising in conduct risk, culture, risk management and compliance. “I’ve worked across a number of clients in banking, insurance, asset management, e-money and investment firms. I definitely would say that, without the opportunity my employer gave me and the qualification I have through Chartered Accountants Ireland, I wouldn’t be in the position I am today,” she says. ACA opens doors Cuggy recalls now: “When I decided to leave engineering to pursue accounting, I remember sitting down with my dad, who is also an accountant, and asking him how best to approach my career.  “He told me that he would really recommend the ACA qualification, because it would open so many doors, whether I wanted to travel or work in different industries. He could also see how sought-after Chartered Accountants were in the workplace through his own role,” she says. Cuggy considered a number of training routes initially, including ATI, but, when she was offered the Grant Thornton role with the option to study for the ACA qualification after graduating, she “jumped at it”.  “I remember thinking how great it was to be able to continue studying while getting real-life experience and how supported I felt by the Institute and by my employer,” she says. “The ACA has allowed me to continue to learn, I’ve made some fantastic friends and the experiences I’ve had—with, firstly, the CAI student committees and now with the Young Professionals committee—have been some of my best in my career.” Even in the relatively short time she has so far spent in the profession, Cuggy has seen the role of the accountant evolve to become more consultancy focused. “That’s why it’s so great to see the FAE elective broaden to include this wider range of roles, such as financial services,” she says.  “I think in the future, automation will change the nature of the accountant’s role further, but we always need a human element to what we do.  “A system can provide data and results—and may be able to make a decision based on that—but it won’t have the pragmatic approach humans bring, or the empathy.  “Machines can’t consider how decisions and outcomes will affect a customer’s wellbeing, nor can they take into account the needs of an organisation on a human level.” 

As the International Sustainability Standards Board gears up to release two new standards, Linda McWeeney outlines what companies can do now to prepare The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) will release two mandatory sustainability standards later this year.  Both will bear the same weight as current international standards and companies will be required to apply them for annual reporting periods on or after 1 January 2024. The main aim of the new ISSB sustainability standards (S1 and S2) is that, initially, companies will provide reasonable and supportive information with regard to sustainability. The ISSB has provided reliefs and guidance.  Year one requirements Even though there will be a requirement to provide sustainability reporting information along with the financial statements, companies can hold off on this reporting in year one and align it with their half yearly reporting where necessary.  There will also be no requirement for comparative information in year one. Companies using different methods can continue to use these methods for measuring scopes for the first year and will continue to align methods with the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol.    S1 and S2 will not be entirely new to many companies as they have been developed and built on the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards.   Investors and regulators demand and need high-quality, comparable information about risks and opportunities in relation to climate change in particular.   TCFD disclosure recommendations The TCFD sets out disclosure recommendations based upon core elements around which companies operate. These are: Governance Strategy Risk management Metrics and targets The disclosure recommendations are structured around these four elements. This information should help investors understand how the relevant reporting organisations think about and assess climate-related risks and opportunities: Governance Companies need to describe the board’s oversight of climate-related risks and opportunities.   Processes need to be in place to identify climate-related issues and boards need to be kept informed regularly on these issues. Climate needs to be part of the company’s strategy, policies, plans, budgets, goals and targets. Strategy Companies need to be able to describe the climate-related risks and opportunities and their impact on the organisation’s businesses, strategy, and financial planning. Risk management Processes need to be in place for identifying and assessing climate-related risks. How significant climate-related risks are in relation to other risks should be discussed and analysed. Boards should consider regulatory requirements related to climate change and how to mitigate and control material risks. Metrics and targets Metrics used by the organisation to assess climate-related risks and opportunities in line with its strategy and risk management process should be disclosed.  GHG emissions should be calculated in line with the GHG Protocol methodology to allow for aggregation and comparability across organisations and jurisdictions.  Reporting on emissions Companies are required to report on emissions. Direct emissions are generated from sources owned and controlled by the reporting company – e.g., transport fuels, heating fuels and fugitive gases or emissions of GHG associated with particular manufacturing processes. These emissions are classified as scope 1.   Indirect emissions are also generated as a consequence of the activities of the reporting company—but occur at sources owned or controlled by another company. These include scope 2 and scope 3 emissions.  Scope 2 includes the emissions associated with the purchase of electricity, heat, steam and cooling. Companies can identify these energy uses on the basis of utility bills or metered energy consumption at facilities within the inventory boundary.  The ISSB has agreed that a company disclosing scope 2 emissions would use the locations-based approach, which emphasises the connection between consumer demand for electricity and the emissions resulting from local electricity production.  Within a particular geographic boundary and over a specified time period, electricity output is aggregated and averaged.   Scope 3 emissions include entire value chain emissions. The majority of total corporate emissions fall under this scope from the goods it purchases to the disposal of the products it sells. While Scope 1 and 2 emissions are within the control of the company as they are operational, scope 3 emissions raise business development and strategy questions pertaining to products and services.   Companies using different methods can continue to use these methods for measuring scopes for the first year and will continue to align methods with the GHG Protocol.      Companies can also continue to be guided by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) to help assess and take responsibility for their impacts and contribute to a more sustainable future using a multi-stakeholder and investor-focused approach. Further reading Listed large companies will be required to report on these from 1 January 2024. The date supports interoperability with other jurisdictional sustainability requirements, such as EU Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission.  The effective date for smaller companies will be later. While there is no immediate requirement for sustainability reporting for smaller companies, these companies should begin taking action to assess their impact on the environment and society.  This will help to improve their own impact, but may also be required if they are in the supply chains of larger in-scope companies which require their suppliers to provide ESG-related information.  There are many resources available to help small companies in this regard. Good starting points are guides such as Sustainability for Accountants and Sustainability for Small Businesses, available in the Sustainability Centre on charteredaccountants.ie and the Irish Government’s climatetoolkit4business.gov.ie. Linda McWeeney is Non-Executive Director and Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Finance at Technological University Dublin

Its acquisition by ETL Global marks an exciting new era in the evolution of Dublin firm new Noone Casey, says co-founder Anthony Casey Just over three decades since it first opened its doors, Noone Casey, the Dublin-based accounting firm, is entering a new era as part of ETL Global, the German-headquartered professional services network. For Anthony Casey, who co-founded the firm in 1992 with joint partner Andrew Noone, the move marks an exciting new chapter in their shared business story.  “We say that we tell the financial stories of local and international businesses who care about their success, whether measured in financial, social or personal terms,” says Casey. “And now, after 30 years of storytelling from Dublin, Noone Casey is following in the footsteps of Joyce, Beckett and even Murdoch in creating a greater international dimension to our business.” Recalling the firm’s early days, Casey adds: “I remember the business environment in Ireland when we started was poor. We were just coming out of the eighties and state supports for early-stage businesses were few and far between. “I think our turnover in year one was about £25,000 between the two of us. We really were bootstrapped, but that was how we had to operate.  “We just built the business as we went, but the key always was that we enjoyed it even back then, and we have continued to enjoy it as the years have gone by.” Noone Casey has also carved out its own successful niche in the media and entertainment sectors, working with well-known artists and personalities, such as Tommy Tiernan, Mark Little and Grammy award winners Rodrigo y Gabriela, alongside clients in technology and professional services. “It was actually through our work in media that we found out about ETL Global,” says Noone.  “We were dealing with MGR Weston Kay in London in relation to our media clients and they suggested that we get in touch with Dr Christian Gorny, CEO of ETL Global, and the senior ETL Global management team.” Casey and Noone saw “immediate value” in a potential new alliance with ETL Global, which provides accounting, taxation and legal services to companies of all sizes, but especially start-ups and SMEs. “Noone Casey is similar in that we have largely specialised in providing Irish start-ups and SMEs with accounting, assurance and corporate finance services—and ETL recognises the role of the accounting practice in providing, not just compliance, but ongoing financial advice and support to SMEs,” says Casey. “The SME sector accounts for 99.8 percent of the total number of enterprises in Ireland and Irish Chartered Accountancy firms are the backbone of this market. We just saw this really compelling opportunity for the ETL skill base in the Irish market.” ETL Global launched in 2015 as the international arm of Essen-based professional services firm ETL, and now has a worldwide network of over 1,000 offices in 50 countries. “Our acquisition is part of ETL Global’s rapid expansion in Europe. It allows them to offer a global service to member firms, including succession planning, international accounting and taxation support for expanding Irish firms,” says Casey. He will now take on a new role as Master Partner for ETL Global in the Irish market while the firm’s day-to-day management will continue to be led by Roseann Heavey. Like both Casey and Noone, Heavey is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland.  She trained and qualified with the Dublin firm before gaining further experience in Ireland and the UK and then returning to become Noone Casey’s Managing Partner. “My own role with the firm has always been focused on business development and I will now be responsible for identifying firms that are the right fit for ETL Global investment,” Casey says. The ETL Global target is to invest in five firms in the Irish market in 2023, followed by five in 2024, and up to 10 in 2025. “I’m really looking forward to meeting firms around the country as ETL rolls out its expansion plans, because I know from first-hand experience just how problematic succession planning in accounting firms has been in recent years,” he says. ETL typically acquires 51 percent of new member firms, such as Noone Casey. It will also finance the next generation of partners in acquiring the shares of the original partners, and the acquisition of successful sole trader firms by member firms. “What we have done in effect here is dilute our shareholding. This allows for opportunities in the future to step away if and when we want to, with a succession plan in place whereby key staff members can then come forward and acquire our shares from us as time progresses,” says Casey. “When you build a business, the start-up phase is always exciting, then there is the ‘messy middle’ where you’re driving forward, earning money and building the business, and then you suddenly arrive at a stage where you have to ask yourself, ‘how do we exit and retain value?’  “We had been having this conversation in-house for a few years; trying to work out how we could exit the business smoothly without being dependent on new partners coming in and paying us over an extended period of time.  “We didn’t want to follow that model, and the Big Four model where you’re ‘naked in, naked out’—you don’t buy in or get paid off on the way out—wasn’t relevant to us,” says Casey. “At the same time, we were thinking, ‘well, we have created a business that’s profitable—how do we get value out of it?’  “It can be very challenging to identify a party that has the necessary funds available and also respects your independence. ETL Global satisfied both of these criteria for us and that was really the genesis of the deal.”

Fiona Hickey has hit a mid-career milestone as the founder of an award-winning practice. Her career advice to other women? Forge your own path in your own time My career started with a really fantastic experience under a training contract with Deloitte and I got what I considered my first ‘real’ job with Oracle in 2008.  I got stuck in, learned the ropes and got to grips with a new type of office politics. Soon, at age 26, I was forging ahead and happy with my progress.  At that stage, I had no idea that the path I saw laid out before me was not the one I was going to take. Shifting priorities It was around this time that my sister was diagnosed with cancer. It was tough, and made me realise that I shouldn’t waste any precious time.  So, at 29, some years ahead of my college friends and peers—and only a few short years since starting my first real job with Oracle—I had Danny, my son. I’m not sure I would have chosen to start a family at that stage if my sister hadn’t fallen ill.  I had so much ambition and a career plan mapped out, but I had also realised that there are no guarantees in life. Starting our family became the direction my husband and I really wanted to go in.  I started a Diploma in Insolvency when I was on maternity leave and Danny had reached the nine-month milestone. Despite the heavy demands of motherhood, I never stopped wanting to learn.  At around the same time, my brother took the brave step of setting up his own company, and I supported him in those early days, spending evenings doing payroll, VAT and book-keeping for his start-up–all tasks I had never done in audit or industry.  This was learning from the ground up, all while wading through the minefield of Revenue tax and CRO filings.  An unexpected career path When I returned to my role with Oracle after 13 months’ maternity leave, it was with this new experience in practice work and self-employment.  Looking back, I had stumbled onto a new and unexpected career path. I found it hugely fulfilling but it wasn’t always easy.  Throughout my first pregnancy and maternity leave, and my son’s early years, I felt like my career was stagnating while my friends were making progress and building on exciting opportunities.  I wondered if the time I’d taken to start my family would leave my career forever one step behind my peers. On the other hand, I found I had such a different drive after my son was born. I still didn’t mind hard work, but I didn’t want to be committed to working like in the same way I had been before his arrival.  My priorities changed. My outlook was different. I decided that if I had fallen behind my peers because I had prioritised my family, it was worth it overall. Timing isn’t everything It was after I had my daughter Hannah aged 31, that I knew I was ready to take the next step in my career: setting up a practice myself in Ashbourne, Co. Meath—my hometown. At the time, there were no part-time accounting roles for women, including with the Big Four. I needed to create my own position. Entrepreneurship is in my genes. My father had run his own business, also in Ashbourne, and I wanted to be in practice so I could connect with people at a grassroots level. To this day, I care so much about each client, their business, and how best to advise and assist them.  I also have profound gratitude towards each client who has come through the door at FAH Chartered Accountants, allowing me to realise my dream of being self-employed.  There was a time when I thought my career would stagnate because I had decided to start a family young. When I was working hard to build my practice, however, my college peers and friends started taking time out to start their own families.  By the time they were ready to return to their jobs, my own career had kicked off again and my practice was growing.  The time I took for my family was when they built their careers, and the time they took for their families was when I built mine. We were never in competition.  These women are all friends and peers whom I greatly admire, but it just goes to show that there is no such thing as “the right time”. It’s the work and passion you put in, and I was right to start my family when I wanted to.  Career ebbs and flows  Everyone has ebbs and flows in their career journey. Whether you want to take time out for family, personal or health reasons, your career can always be kickstarted again.  I hired my first employee six years ago and my practice has continued to grow since. In 2021, we moved to a bigger bespoke office and we topped the Small Practice category at the 2022 Irish Accountancy Awards as well as being named overall Practice of the Year.  It was a phenomenal achievement for the entire team at FAH Chartered Accountants. On a personal level, however, the practice has become much busier than I had anticipated starting out.  Initially, I expected to work part-time while rearing my family, but my work now is a full-time job, and sometimes more.  The great benefit for me is the flexibility I have, which allows me to plan my week, and each day, around my family’s needs.  Maintaining a work-life balance requires constant effort. There are times when I need to work extra hours in the office, but I can then take extra home time in the days afterwards.  When I am home with my children, I don’t take work calls or answer emails. I remain present and enjoy my time with Danny and Hannah, focusing exclusively on our time together. Do I have to constantly juggle home and work life? Yes. Extra demands in either one can create an imbalance, but with focus and commitment, I can find equilibrium again. Qualifying as a Chartered Accountant can bring many benefits in terms of your career route and flexibility.  As a qualification, it gives you plenty of opportunity to change path and step back, if and when you need to for personal reasons, before restarting your career again. No matter what your priorities may be, my advice is to forge your own path. Remember that everyone’s career will ebb and flow differently. Stay open to new opportunities and never be afraid to pivot to get to where you want to be.  Fiona Hickey is the owner and principal of FAH Chartered Accountants

 As more women become Chartered Accountants, a growing number are leaving mid-career, citing various factors ranging from work-life balance to lack of career progression, writes Liz Riley  In mid-2022, Chartered Accountants Worldwide (CAW) surveyed Chartered Accountants around the globe to gauge how they view the opportunities for women in the profession. What they found about training and early careers is positive. There are no obvious gender-related barriers to entry into the profession. In recent years, Chartered Accountants Ireland has had a nearly equal intake of men (52%) and women (48%) into training.  And although the women surveyed by CAW acknowledge that there are few women in senior positions within accountancy, this has not deterred them from entering the profession. As the world of accountancy continues to evolve, however, a growing number of women are making the difficult decision to leave or pivot within the profession mid-career.  For years, accountancy has been viewed as a stable career path. Still, despite the profession focusing more on diversity, equity and inclusion, some women are finding that the barriers in their way are too great for them to want to press on.  Moving on from accountancy Even though just one-in-five mid-career women believe their careers have progressed ahead of their expectations, 81 percent still believe they have much to offer the profession.  The CAW survey shows, however, that the willingness to make career sacrifices is at its highest at the mid-career stage when a person’s children are often younger.  The findings also reveal that mid-career women in Ireland and the UK are more likely to be interested in roles that offer work-life balance (39%), flexibility in working location (21%), and access to additional benefits (33%). However, women at a mid-career stage are also significantly more likely to feel stressed (59%), exhausted (40%), and/or disappointed (25%).  In order to effectively address the issue of hiring and retaining women in their mid-careers, Sinead Donovan, Deputy President of Chartered Accountants Ireland, emphasises the importance of organisational leadership taking proactive measures. “Having been in that position earlier in my career, I recognise the barriers, and I also recognise that putting the head down and living with the status quo, like I did in many ways, isn’t an option,” says Donovan.  “Our profession is in the middle of a recruitment and retention challenge and if partners like me and others across the industry don’t step up to harness this talent pool of ambitious mid-career women, we are missing out.” Mid-career choices and challenges According to Dawn Leane, founder and CEO of Leane Empower, a female-focused coaching, mentoring and training organisation, a number of factors tend to influence women’s mid-career choices and priorities. “They have family or parent caring commitments, or both. Society has moved on a bit, but not enough, and women are still the primary caregivers for family members. So, at that point, there’s a lot of demand on their time.”  Patricia Monahan, Chief Executive of Monaghan County Council, remembers a profession that did not cater to women with families.  “Gender became a noticeable issue when I went to work in a Big Five firm in the ‘90s. That was a high-pressure, high-stakes job with very big clients,” she says. “There were few, if any, women with children working in my division of the firm while many of the senior men had families.  “That was the first time I noticed a difference between men and women in the profession. Because it was a very pressured environment, I just think it wasn’t very family friendly.” But the disparity that continues today isn’t just about family commitments. “Very often, women around the mid-career age come to the perimenopausal stage,” says Leane. “At this point in their careers, women sometimes either leave the workforce if possible or look for a change because they find some symptoms difficult to manage, such as brain fog and poor sleep.  “They ask if they are getting back from their organisations what they put in, and they find that no, they’re not.” Limited career options Laura Maloney, now an executive and wellbeing coach offering a programme called Returnity, aimed at women returning to work post-leave, left the profession in 2016 after finding that her career options were limited after her role changed. “In 2008, my role [in practice] moved sideways to risk management. The following year, there were swathes of redundancies, and I was lucky enough to be in a very secure role, even though it may not have been the right role for me,” she says.  “As the years went on, nobody at the firm was moving, and I felt that my options were limited. When it came to assessing where we were as a family and what came next in my career, my choice was not to return [to accountancy] after my third maternity leave.  “I wanted to be valuable. I wanted to contribute. I wanted to be useful, but I was in this role, and I was not happy. It wasn’t a great fit. How did I know that? Because I never felt like the role or the organisation was getting the best from me.” Career pivots Patricia Monahan qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1987 and, after working in tax in Dublin, and despite having a positive working experience, decided to relocate to County Monaghan ten years later for family reasons. Monahan continued to take roles that had an accountancy element after relocating until a role for an assistant principal officer became available at Cavan and Monaghan Education and Training Board (ETB).  “All of my roles outside of Dublin were probably atypical for a Chartered Accountant, especially the ones in the public service. When I transferred from the ETB, I became an accountant with the council,” she says. “Shortly after that, I got an opportunity to be a director of services at the council, which, again, took me away from the accountancy role. I had water and environmental services, the fire service, health and safety procurement and roads—all areas that were not in my training.” From there, Monahan decided to dedicate herself to public service, eventually becoming the Interim Chief Executive of Monaghan County Council. “When making career decisions, it didn’t matter whether [my role] was or wasn’t accountancy. It was more about whether it was a progression for me in my career,” she says. “Moving to a director of service role from accounting was definitely a progression. It was a much wider remit of responsibility and a management job.  “Accountancy skills are still very useful and transferable, and the Chartered Accountancy qualification is a good base for any career. I wouldn’t necessarily say I left them behind. I’d say I took them with me, but they were just not the dominant skills I needed.” Tackling the mid-career slump While many women make significant strides in the early stages of their career, they often face various challenges as they progress up the professional ladder.  “Organisations need to be aware of what is standing in the way of women 10 to 20 years after qualification,” says Leane.  “They need to really engage with women to see what they identify as being the blockers to their careers. I’m a big believer in things like mentoring and sponsorship for women in organisations, and this doesn’t have to come from other women. Men are keen to support women in the workplace but might not always know what to do.” “Research shows that, when a woman is working for a male manager, male managers often dilute feedback or don’t give women the feedback they need to develop their career because they fear an emotional response, even if that’s not valid,” explains Leane.  “If you’re giving feedback that you think a woman would like to hear, rather than what they need to hear, that is an enormous barrier in their career.” Moloney thinks there has been an improvement but says that women need honest conversations and feedback, so that they can fully understand their options. “One of the areas that has definitely improved since I left the profession is the willingness to have more honest, open and transparent conversations about things like satisfaction, values and purpose, and achievement. This isn’t a language we would have spoken when I worked in accountancy,” she says. “This is highly dependent on the teams you work in and the managers you work for, and their willingness and how equipped they are to have those kinds of conversations, but they can be the difference between someone leaving the profession or staying.” An important choice According to Leane, there are several steps women can take themselves to ensure their career continues to flourish. “A woman must think about her professional brand and networking – all the skills men got to develop when training,” she says.  “Women often see the benefit in getting the work done – we are taught the benefit of getting the work done – while men have been taught to make themselves known in their professional networks and pick their heads up. “Women might not realise many of these unwritten rules and norms of behaviour exist in the workplace. Many women find they have been very qualified for, say, a certain promotion, but by waiting for the tap on the shoulder or not putting themselves forward, they didn’t play the game.” Moloney says women need to figure out what they want before they can take the next steps in their careers. “It’s all about empowerment and encouragement. So much of the experience I had in my professional career was waiting for validation and affirmation from other areas or other people to tell me that I was doing the right thing at the right time. I should have been able to depend on myself.  “Nobody is advocating for you, but it’s difficult to advocate for yourself when you don’t know what you want. What do you want to do? What do you value? What do you love? What motivates you? You have to answer those questions for yourself before you can communicate them to someone in your organisation who can help you.” Organisations can only do so much, Monahan says, and there comes the point when a woman has to make her own choices. “Ultimately, women have to make choices that will suit their own circumstances, and shouldn’t have to justify those choices.” 

Now more than ever, employers must do all they can to support LBGTQ+ employees, break down career barriers and fight discrimination, writes John McNamara Spoiler alert…there is a call to action for all members in this article. I was shocked to read in a new report launched in February that 2022 was the most violent year for LGBTQ+ people in Europe in a decade.  The report from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe), a leading equality organisation, stated that there had not just been a stark rise in violence, but also in the severity of this violence, much of it fuelled by an ongoing rise in hate speech, often related to trans people.  ILGA-Europe noted that the translation of hate speech into real-world, physical violence is occurring “not only in countries where hate speech is rife, but also in countries where it is widely believed that LGBTQ+ people are progressively accepted”. According to the report, a dozen far-right groups targeting people due to their sexual orientation and gender identity, have been identified in Ireland. The outlook in Ireland There may be a sense in Ireland that the LGBTQ+ agenda is complete following the 2015 marriage equality referendum. The reality is different.  Just two weeks after the ILGA Report was released, new research published here by Belong to Youth Services revealed that 87 percent of young LGBTQ+ people had seen or experienced anti-LGBTQ+ hate and harassment on social media in the previous year.  This followed earlier research, carried out in October 2022, which found that 76 percent of LGBTQ+ students feel unsafe at school, 69 percent had heard homophobic remarks from other students, and 58 percent had heard homophobic remarks from school staff. The reality remains that many LGBTQ+ people still choose not to disclose their sexuality at work, while many senior executives have not come out at the office.  Fear of homophobia, judgement, exclusion and being passed over for promotion, are still very real for many LGBTQ+ employees.  The power of positive action So, what can businesses do to break down these career barriers, reduce workplace discrimination and better support LBGTQ+ employees in the workplace? Positively, every one of us can take action within our own businesses, by providing leadership and tangible support.  Numerous studies over many years have demonstrated that companies that truly support diversity and inclusion as part of their culture thrive in areas such as: Increased employee satisfaction, engagement and retention;  Increased productivity and team collaboration; Improved employee mental health; and Improved innovation, customer engagement, financial performance and shareholder value. What you can do Only through tangible and meaningful support can employers reap the benefits outlined above, however. Refreshing a company logo during Pride Month, or making a big social media splash, won’t cut it.  At best, it’s a good first step but businesses need to back up these symbols of solidarity with meaningful support.  Here are five ways we can make a real difference through our actions in the workplace. 1. Lead by example from the top Put aside feeling awkward or the fear of using the wrong words. Instead, those in leadership roles should take the time to learn and understand the relevant issues.  Consider setting up an employee resource group or a focus group or ask HR to work on specific topics. Have a senior leader take the lead on LGBTQ+ employee inclusion. This person may not be LGBTQ+ themselves, but they can still be an ally.  LGBTQ+ employees feel more engaged and invested in a workplace that is a safe place, that is accepting and that allows them to be themselves, and more so if they have a boss who is sympathetic to their own struggles. 2. Develop a supportive LGBTQ+ inclusive policy framework and live it LGBTQ+ inclusion should be a core part of your Equality and Diversity policy. As a first step, make sure these policies explicitly mention how you as an employer support LGBTQ+ people within your organisation.  Test any employee surveys for inclusive language. Make your benefits inclusive for all employees by being conscious of the words you use in communications and favouring gender-neutral terms.  Make clear your support for LGBGT+ inclusion in your recruitment practices and back this up in employee induction programmes. Your workplace policies should establish a strong sense of anti-discrimination so that all employees know what is not tolerated, whether from employees or customers.  Create a communication plan to be sure all employees know what is not tolerated and be clear on the consequences.  3. Support your local LGBTQ+ community Use your position of influence to show your support for your local LGBTQ+ community. Provide information about local events and groups, invite speakers to share their lived experiences, consider sponsoring local resource or sports groups, or encourage staff volunteering at LGBTQ+ events.  These are small but tangible first steps in developing a year-round programme of authentic support and allyship, and not just for Pride month. 4. Support transgender employees All the available research shows that transgender people face a unique set of experiences and challenges, and in an increasingly toxic external environment.  Education and learning can be vital first steps. Request HR support to be clear on what steps to take after an employee comes out as transgender to create a supportive and encouraging environment.  There is a lot of easily available information that can help to support greater understanding of trans issues. Explicit statements of support are crucial.  Back this up with practical support. If you offer health benefits, seek to make them trans-inclusive, develop supportive leave policies, use gender-neutral wording and try to provide the ability to allow changes to company records.  5. Talk, listen, act Above all, speak regularly and openly with all staff and your customers about what LGBTQ+ inclusion looks like in your business, how you should address it and how staff can help support it.  We all know that staff who are better understood will be happier and more productive. We develop plans all the time for most aspects of our business and speaking to an agreed plan on these issues often provides a framework for that ongoing dialogue.  At the same time pro-actively look out for signs of problems or issues - identifying signs that staff are under stress, feel unable to be their true selves or are not happy at work, can help you deal with problems at an early stage before they become more difficult to resolve or manage. About BALANCE Chartered Accountants Ireland needs to lead by example too. BALANCE is the LGBTQ+ Allies network group established in 2022 with three events taking place over the course of the year.  Simply put, BALANCE exists to promote awareness of LGBTQ+ inclusion and highlight issues of relevance. We want to be a profession of choice for new students.  We want to encourage visibility and to ensure students and members can be their authentic selves, both during their studies and at work. We want to build and strengthen relationships with our LGBTQ+ allies who work to ensure that the LGBTQ+ perspective is represented at all tiers. This year will see a partnership event in May with KPMG on issues related to digital world engagement, a regional event, profiling of member experiences and further work to highlight issues of importance.  I encourage you to look at our web pages to find out more about BALANCE, access links to resources you may find helpful and we actively welcome new committee members.  Please do get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions at BALANCE@charteredaccountants.ie or check out charteredaccountants.ie/diversity-and-inclusion/balance-lgbtq-network-group John McNamara is Chair of BALANCE and Executive Director and CFO at AIB life

The banking system is driven by confidence and when that confidence evaporates, the risk of contagion becomes real and dangerous, writes Jim Power One of the abiding memories of the great financial crisis back in 2008 and thereafter was the virtual collapse of the global financial system following the implosion of the US sub-prime mortgage market.  This implosion created a domino effect around the world and its tentacles spread far and wide, devastating the Irish banking system.  The Irish banking system was ripe for devastation after nearly a decade of excessive lending and poor lending standards.  A banking system is driven by confidence, but when that confidence evaporates, the risk of contagion becomes very real and very dangerous. This has played out in recent weeks.  Silicon Valley Bank collapse In the second week of March, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) became the second largest bank in US history to collapse and the biggest lender to fail since the 2008 crisis after customers rushed to withdraw cash due to fears over its liquidity.  SVB was a bank that loaned money to start-up companies mainly in the technology area and it also provided other financial services to both start-ups and other technology companies.  Another US bank, Signature Bank, was also shut down by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The earlier collapse of crypto-bank Silvergate did not help matters.  The FDIC forced SVB bank to cease operations on 10 March. At the peak of the technology boom, SVB placed $91 billion of its $188 billion in deposits in long-dated securities such as mortgage bonds and Treasury securities.  The value of those bonds had fallen heavily over the past year, however, as the Federal Reserve increased short-term interest rates aggressively.  The value of its assets was also adversely affected by the sharp correction in the global technology sector over the past year.  The bank sought to raise funding of $2.25 billion to cover the losses on its bond portfolio, but without success. This contributed to a run on its deposits and the closure and eventual sale of the bank by the FDIC.  In an FDIC insured bank, up to $250,000 is guaranteed, but the problem for SVB, reflecting the nature of its client base (it had almost 40,000 customers), is that an estimated 93 percent of deposits were not covered as they are over the threshold.  For a normal bank, it is estimated that around 50 per cent of deposits are guaranteed.  This lack of insurance created serious concerns amongst depositors, and we basically witnessed an old-fashioned run on a bank.  Although slightly different, Signature Bank had similar difficulties. In response to the crisis and the risk of contagion, the US authorities responded quickly and aggressively.  First, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen instructed the FDIC to make whole all depositors with both SVB and Signature Bank out of its Deposit Insurance Fund.  The aim was to shore up confidence among depositors at US banks. Concerns about moral hazard are being ignored for the moment. Second, the Federal Reserve introduced a new lending facility to provide additional funding to banks that run into liquidity problems.  The new Bank Term Lending Program (BTLP) will operate alongside the Federal Reserve’s existing repo facility and will provide loans at a duration of 12 months.  Crucially, the qualifying assets for access to these loans will be valued at par (rather than marked to market).  This should ensure access for institutions sitting on unrealised losses in their held-to-maturity security portfolios. Developments in Europe Recent banking problems have not been confined to the US. In Europe, CSFB has had to be acquired by its larger competitor, UBS.  In the case of CSFB, the vultures have been circling for some time due to a series of scandals in recent years. These have included the largest trading loss in its 167-year history after the implosion of Archegos Capital, and the closure of $10 billion of investment funds linked to a collapsed financial firm, Greensill.  It was revealed that the bank’s auditor, PwC, had identified material weaknesses in its financial reporting controls, which delayed the publication of its annual report.  It is possible to go through each of the troubled banks in turn and conclude that the problems are somewhat unique and are not reflective of the global banking system in general, but the list is getting longer. The heavy concentration of bonds on the SVB balance sheet created the main vulnerability for that institution, but there is once again a more general concern about bank regulation, and particularly the deregulation engineered by Trump in 2018 in response to intense lobbying and a somewhat warped ideological belief system.  His reforms basically reduced the regulatory supervision of smaller banks and indeed the CEO of SVB lobbied heavily for such a relaxation of supervisory standards in the past. The reality is that all banks need to be heavily regulated.  Central banks will continue to respond aggressively to seek to contain any banking problems that might arise in the months ahead.  The likelihood is that further problems will emerge given the move away from the intoxicating effects of artificially low interest rates. A decade of Quantitative Easing was always going to give rise to challenges.  The recent problems for Deutsche Bank clearly illustrate just how nervous the markets are at the moment and how an apparently relatively stable bank can get into difficulty.  Irish banking system For the Irish banking system, the main risks are more likely to be caused by global contagion rather than any inherent balance sheet problems.  In fact, the balance sheets of the Irish banks look relatively solid due to quite stringent capital requirements and other regulatory requirements introduced over the past decade.  We should be thankful for this, but also recognise that the radically changed monetary policy environment has the potential to cause difficulties in areas that might not appear obvious.  The current banking difficulties are likely to increase the cost of funding for banks, pressurise profitability, lead to tighter lending standards, reduced credit availability, and result in more expensive banking services.  Given the fundamentally important role played by banking from an overall economic perspective, such outcomes would undermine activity and damage growth prospects.  Perhaps, it will now take some momentum out of central bank interest rate tightening.  It is not 2008, but it still feels uncomfortable. Banking volatility can now be added to the long list of global economic risks we are facing. 

As Ireland’s housing crisis deepens, Pat Dennigan of Focus Ireland is calling on the Government to take immediate steps to support those at risk  Faced with a 24 percent rise in homelessness and this month’s lifting of the Government ban on no-fault evictions, Pat Dennigan is forecasting a challenging year ahead for Focus Ireland, the homelessness charity he has led as CEO since 2018. Figures published by the Department of Housing put the number of people officially homeless in Ireland in February at 11,742, up 24 percent on the same month last year. “About 12,500 people came to us last year for support and the lifting of the eviction ban means we are about to enter a new phase of homelessness,” says Dennigan. “Nothing has changed since the ban was introduced. We still have a housing crisis in this country and lifting the ban will do nothing to allay fears among landlords as they are selling up in vast numbers because of high taxation and market uncertainty.” As CEO of Focus Ireland, the not-for-profit organisation founded in 1985 by Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, Dennigan leads a team of 400 people providing services nationwide. “We offer about 90 different services and operate a two-tier approach. The first tier is prevention—making people aware of their rights and responsibilities and making sure they have access to the right information and entitlements,” says Dennigan. “The second tier is our sustained exit policy whereby people who are homeless can get a long-term home and keep it.” Focus Ireland also has Focus Housing Association, an Approved Housing Body operating 1,400 long-term homes nationwide. “One of the big attractions of this job for me is the variety of the work I do and the people I meet. The situations and challenges I encounter are completely different from one day to the next,” says Dennigan. One of these challenges is ensuring that the experiences of the people Focus Ireland works with are fairly and accurately reflected in public policy. Fair reflection “We are almost unique among Irish charities in the sense that, from our foundation, we have concentrated on having an evidential response to what we do, based on the data we accumulate. All of our work is underpinned by research and evaluation,” says Dennigan. “Given current circumstances, where we have record numbers of people who are homeless and entering homelessness every month in Ireland—and also the ending of the moratorium on evictions—we face a massive challenge in putting forward constructive and progressive proposals that have a national impact.” To this end, Focus Ireland has partnered with Chartered Accountants Ireland to launch a joint briefing paper calling on the Government to help ease the housing crisis by introducing targeted measures to keep small-scale landlords in the private rented market. While the long-term government objective of increasing the delivery of social, affordable, and cost rental housing is the right course of action, the short-term challenge presented by the large-scale departure of private landlords from the market must also be addressed, Dennigan says. “The vast majority of families who come to us, who have fallen into homelessness or are facing the risk of homelessness, come from the private rented sector,” he says. “They have been served with a notice to quit and, in many cases, this is because their landlord is selling the property they live in and leaving the market.  “Typically, the landlord decides to sell the property, serves the tenant with a notice to quit and then puts the property up for sale. The property is then bought by someone who is going to be the owner-occupier. “On a wider scale, this means that the stock of rental property is shrinking daily and, for the tenant served with the notice to quit, finding somewhere else to live is hugely difficult, particularly if they want to live in the same area with links to schools and the local community.” The Focus Ireland and Chartered Accountants Ireland briefing paper sets out seven fully costed proposals, primarily using tax policy as a lever to encourage small-scale landlords to remain in the residential rental market in the medium- to long-term. “At Focus Ireland, we believe Government targets set out in Housing For All are too low, but until we begin to address the issue of increased housing supply, there will continue to be a shortage of private rented homes to buy,” says Dennigan. “In order to incentivise landlords to stay in the market until we increase our housing stock, we believe short- to medium-term measures are needed over four to six years to help deal with our housing crisis.” Meaningful work Sligo-born Dennigan joined Focus Ireland in 2014, initially as Acting Finance Director, having spent much of his career in the multinational sector in the west of Ireland. “I worked for organisations like Boston Scientific, Nortel Networks and other medical device and tech companies. In the background, I was always motivated by applying the skills those experiences gave me in the service of others and the community,” he says. “My role with Focus Ireland gives me the balance of applying my skills in what is, hopefully, a meaningful way. There is a lot to juggle but I enjoy that and the feeling that I am helping to make a real difference in people’s lives.” Focus Ireland published its current five-year strategy in 2021, laying out plans to support more than 4,000 households out of homelessness and prevent 3,000 households from becoming homeless. The strategy aims to deliver 1,150 new homes in partnership with local authorities and other State agencies through a mix of direct build, buying and leasing. “We have ambitious targets and a significant fundraising requirement each year,” says Dennigan.  “We receive substantial state funding, but it is not close to being enough to meet our overall financial needs. This year, we will have to raise over €14 million to fund our services and that is a big challenge.” A Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland, Dennigan says he was delighted to partner with the Institute to publish the joint briefing paper calling for targeted measures to keep small-scale landlords in the private rented market. “The document is relevant and appropriate in the current situation. We also believe there is an amplified voice when Focus Ireland and Chartered Accountants Ireland come together with a similar view and a similar set of proposals,” he says. “I would personally like to thank Chartered Accountants Ireland for helping us to share our message and we look forward to building on this collaboration in the future.”

Minister for Finance Michael McGrath TD talks to Accountancy Ireland about his political career, profession as an accountant and priorities for the months ahead Minister for Finance Michael McGrath can still recall the first time he walked through the doors of Leinster House in 2007 as a publicly elected member of the Dáil. It was, he says, “a humbling experience”. “It still is today—to be elected by your community. I will always be humbled walking into Leinster House as an elected representative of the people. It is an enormous honour,” he says. McGrath’s appointment last December as Minister for Finance was the latest milestone in a political career stretching back to the late nineties.  It was also an apt appointment for McGrath, a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland, who is, he says, determined to “hand over the national finances in good health” when his term draws to a close. The seeds of McGrath’s political interests were sown at a young age, growing up in Passage West on the west bank of Cork Harbour. “During my school days, I enjoyed history as a subject and an interest in current affairs was encouraged at home,” he says.  “The news would always be on in the background and there were always newspapers around we were encouraged to read.  “I remember, because we lived in a rural area where it wasn’t possible to walk or take a bus to school, we would be driven there in the morning and the radio would be on in the car. I can still hear David Hanly interviewing people on Morning Ireland.  “It’s amazing how things stick with you. Listening to those interviews sparked an interest in me about the world around me and about political life, the reach it has and how much it influences pretty much everything that we do.” Start in politics While growing up, McGrath was also heavily involved in community sports and the local development association in Passage West. “I was very fortunate to be brought up in an area where there was a Town Council. They are all unfortunately abolished now, but it was a great starting point for someone like me with an interest in politics,” he says.  “You didn’t need a huge number of votes to get elected. If you had a good network of family and friends in the community, you could succeed.” As his interest in politics was taking root, McGrath was also learning that he had a head for numbers and an interest in business. “I did business studies at second level and decided to study commerce at UCC from 1993 to 1997,” he says. “That actually coincided with the introduction of specialised degrees at the university, such as finance and accounting and Business Information Systems. But I chose the BComm because I hadn’t studied accountancy at second level.” In his third year at university, McGrath began to seriously consider his career options. “I knew I wanted to stay in Cork and that I wanted to secure a professional qualification,” he says. “The obvious next step was to sign up to a training contract and continue with my studies. There wasn’t much accounting in the BComm, so I was only exempt from the old Prof 1 and some of the Prof 2 subjects, but I was very eager. “I finished the Prof 2 exams before I even started my training contract with KPMG the September after leaving college and went straight into Prof 3 in my first year of training, and the FAE the following year.” Value of the profession McGrath chose to qualify as a Chartered Accountant because, he says, he “saw the value of the qualification and the analytical skills it gives you”. “There was a lot of respect for the qualification, then as now. It is a professional passport—a globally recognised qualification that can take you anywhere in the world. I felt that it was the natural next step for me.” Shortly after joining KPMG and aged just 22, McGrath ran for his first Town Council election in Passage West and Monkstown.  “It was the year of my FAEs. While on study leave, I split my time between studying and canvassing for the election. I really enjoyed my four years with KPMG, learned a huge amount and met my future wife Sarah working there. As I always say, we fell in love across an audit file! After qualifying, an opportunity came up that I simply couldn’t refuse. I joined Red FM in Cork as financial controller,” he says. “It was a really exciting start-up radio station in Cork with some dynamic investors and I was there for a few months before it went on air, so I was involved in setting up the commercial relationships and recruiting staff.” McGrath’s work with Red FM involved reporting daily to the station’s chief executive and monthly to the board of directors. “As a young newly qualified accountant, it was a fantastic experience and gave me a great sense of the practical application of the qualification,” he says.  “I was doing monthly accounts, reporting to the board, managing relationships with suppliers, driving commercial revenues through advertising sales, and helping out with managing staff.” From there, McGrath returned to UCC, joining the finance office as head of management information systems. “My qualification as a Chartered Accountant allowed me to stay in Cork at a time when my interest in politics was really developing and I could pursue that in parallel,” he says.  “I managed to do both for a while, but eventually had to make a decision as to where my future lay. I stayed at UCC for a couple of years, but in truth, politics was taking hold at that stage. “I was on the Town Council and ran for Cork County Council in 2004, which was a much bigger deal. It required a much more vigorous campaign covering a larger area and I needed several thousand votes to get elected.  “After I was elected, I realised very quickly that I simply couldn’t do it all. I couldn’t be a County Councillor attending meetings during the day and, at the same time, hold down a senior role at UCC. I took the decision with my now wife, Sarah, to go for politics. “At that stage I knew where I wanted to go, but I wasn’t sure I could get there, and in many ways I was blind to the personal risks of giving up a secure pensionable job at UCC. It was a great place to work, but my passion lay with politics.” Proudest achievements McGrath was elected to Dáil Éireann for the first time in 2007 as Fianna Fáil TD for Cork South Central and went on to serve as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform from June 2020 to December 2022, when he became Minister for Finance. “Looking back on my time as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, what I think I am most proud of is my role in maintaining social cohesion during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a very dark period for the country,” he says. “We had to make decisions, sometimes with limited information, and make them very quickly. I really take heart now in the way the Irish economy has since rebounded.  “It vindicates the approach we took in introducing the Pandemic Unemployment Payment Scheme and the Wage Subsidy Scheme. “Reaching political agreement on the review of the National Development Plan with a commitment of €165 billion in capital investment through to 2030 is another achievement I am very proud of—and the fact that we managed to negotiate two public sector pay deals at a time of high inflation.” “As a percentage of national income, our annual capital investment is now among the highest in the European Union and this year, over €12 billion will fund vital infrastructure in areas such as housing, transport, education, enterprise, sport and climate action.” Now, as Minister for Finance, McGrath’s highest priority is, he says, to manage the public finances safely at a time of global turbulence.  “I am acutely aware of this responsibility, not just to the people we serve now, but to the next generation and those yet to come,” he says. “As Minister for Finance, I am ultimately the guardian of the public purse and ensuring that it is properly managed is my number one priority. “I am determined to play my part in handing over the national finance in good health whenever the term of this government ends or my term in this office finishes.” Current priorities Top of the agenda for McGrath currently is navigating the ongoing economic uncertainty prompted by the war in Ukraine and resulting inflationary pressures worldwide. “We are facing huge international challenges at the moment with the ongoing war, the spiral of inflation it has triggered, and the cost-of-living pressures households and businesses are having to endure,” he says. “Despite all of this, the Irish economy is in relatively good health compared to many other developed countries and we anticipate growth across the economy this year.  “The public finances are in good shape. We recorded an estimated general government surplus last year of over €5 billion, equivalent to two per cent of our national income, and we will be forecasting a larger surplus this year. “We have more people working in Ireland than at any time in our history—close to 2.6 million.  “Safeguarding these successes against the background of international economic uncertainty is a key priority for me—managing public expenditure in a sustainable way and handling the fall-out of signing up to the international OECD BEPS agreement.” Agreed in 2021, the OECD’s Domestic Tax Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) deal will bring to an end Ireland’s long standing 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, instead introducing a 15 percent global tax rate for multinationals with annual revenues exceeding €750 million. The lower 12.5 percent rate will be retained for multinationals with annual revenues below this threshold. BEPS will also bring changes to the way in which corporate taxes are applied and collected. “I think BEPS will, in time, come at a cost to Ireland, but that has to be balanced against the policy certainty it affords us in relation to corporate tax as a key lever and, of course, at a European level, efforts are underway to negotiate reforms to the Stability and Growth Pact,” McGrath says. “There are changes to the fiscal rules and Ireland is very much part of this process and seeking to shape the overall outcome.” Indigenous business supports In the months ahead, McGrath says he will be “paying very close attention to the suite of enterprise taxes we have in our code”. “My question is: are we doing enough for SMEs through schemes such as the Key Employee Engagement Programme, the Employment and Investment Incentive Scheme, the Capital Gains Tax environment for entrepreneurs and, of course, the R&D tax credit system?  “I am very conscious that we have an extraordinarily successful Foreign Direct Investment community in Ireland. We must protect and continue to improve this where we can by remaining competitive and investing in our infrastructure and in our talent.  “However, I also think that it will be increasingly important in the future that we have an appropriate balance in how we support our indigenous economy.  “I will be looking very closely at the suite of enterprise tax measures we offer indigenous businesses to see if there is more we can do to incentivise entrepreneurship in Ireland, to reward it and create an environment in which start-ups see Ireland as a location in which they can scale.” Wise investment in public services is another key priority for McGrath. “It is crucial for me to ensure that we have a successful economy, but also that we use the fruits of that success to invest in vital public services,” he says. “We must continue to reform our healthcare system and build up permanent capacity within the system, while also focusing on the green and digital transition, both of which will be central to our economic development over the next 10 to 20 years. We must, of course, also address the huge challenges we face in housing.”

Welcome to the April edition of Accountancy Ireland At the time of writing, in advance of our Ulster Society Annual Dinner in Belfast, we optimistically await the next steps in the process to bring stability and certainty to Northern Ireland in the wake of the Windsor Framework, and hopefully a positive impact on the way our 5,000-plus members there do business into the future.   By the time you read this we will have welcomed an additional 265 members to the fold following our Spring conferring ceremonies in Belfast and Dublin, and I wish you all success in your careers within our community of Chartered Accountants. Outreach visit to the US and Canada In March, I had the honour of being invited to meet a gathering of our members in Toronto, before joining a small delegation from the Institute in New York.  We were invited to participate in roundtables with Ireland Inc., which included senior business leaders, US Congressman Richie Neal, US special envoy on the economy to Northern Ireland, Joe Kennedy III, and Minister for Education Norma Foley.  It was a privilege to attend the ringing of the opening bell on the NYSE and it is testament to our influence as a small country that Ireland got to open the day there, having seen the EY Ireland Entrepreneur of the Year delegation do the same some months ago.  The Minister then spoke at our own hosted event at the Irish Consulate General in New York where we welcomed our US based members and also heard from Ken Bishop of NASBA on the recently extended Mutual Recognition Agreement that Irish Chartered Accountants in the US can and do benefit from working there.  We were also delighted to attend the American Chamber evening where we met Tánaiste Micheál Martin. Moving to Washington DC, it was fantastic to see the political leaders of all the North’s main parties together attend the Ireland Funds dinner and the NI Bureau breakfast.  Council member Pamela McCreedy, Director of Public Affairs Brian Keegan, and I had a chance to catch up with them at these events and to emphasise the importance of stability to our members doing business in the local economy and in the wider spheres of the all-island of Ireland, UK, and broader global economies.  With over 1,000 Irish Chartered Accountants based in North America, we are incredibly proud of the impact they make on business there and how well they represent the Institute in everything they do. Reform of Leaving Certificate accounting syllabus In January, we had significant media coverage in respect of our call for reform of the Leaving Certificate accounting syllabus across national print media, on radio and online.  In February, Brian Feighan, representing CCAB-I, the Institute’s Brid Heffernan and I were invited to meet officials from the Department of Education to discuss ways in which the profession could work with the Department to improve the experience of our young people with accounting at second level.   A number of positive avenues were explored and we will continue to engage over the next number of months to advance the agenda in this regard.   It was positive to note that the Department is planning a Partners’ forum on syllabus reform which would welcome interaction with bodies like ours who wish to offer assistance in ensuring that, amongst other things, the system is supporting the real economic need for financial skills capacity in our business community. International Women’s Day The Chartered Accountants Worldwide global ED&I task force published the first global study to map career journeys of women in the accounting profession, exploring existing barriers on that journey and opportunities for employers to open career pathways for women to progress into more senior positions.  It indicates that while progress has been made, there is still a challenge for the profession in retaining female talent.  Most women surveyed felt they had a lot to offer the profession despite being a parent and are confident they can obtain a senior position. Barriers identified to overcome are a lack of confidence to progress careers, management style of superiors/company culture, and a lack of time off to care for children. Fantastic to be represented at the launch event by our very own Deputy President. Annual Dinner This is the first time I have had the opportunity in Accountancy Ireland to reflect on our Annual Dinner in January at the Convention Centre.   It was fantastic to see everyone gather again in person and to welcome newly appointed Minister for Finance Michael McGrath TD who addressed attendees, and Rachael Blackmore and Anne Heraty who offered great insights into their successful careers.  My thanks to all the businesses who supported the event by hosting tables and to the Institute team who ensured the evening ran so smoothly.  Pat O’Neill FCA President  

Nóra Cashe offers expert advice on handling a pay rise request from an employee while maintaining a positive and productive working relationship The cost-of-living crisis has put severe pressure on business owners from various sources. In addition to the increasing cost of energy, loans and raw materials, employees also seek higher salaries to help pay their bills. Here are six steps to managing this sensitive topic. 1. Link pay rises to performance When you first receive a pay rise request, the best thing to do is to ask for time. Not all employees make the same contribution to the business, so it is reasonable to say you need time to review the position. If the employee makes a verbal request, ask them to submit a written request stating why they deserve a pay rise. Once you have received the request in the format you require, advise the employee that you will review their performance with a line manager and, if appropriate, colleagues and clients. Give the employee a timeframe for when they can expect to receive your decision. Your appraisal will examine factors such as productivity, quality of work, customer satisfaction, teamwork and adherence to company values. 2. Carry out a salary review Once you’re satisfied that the employee’s performance is to the standard required, examine the market pay rate for the employee’s position. Recruitment companies generally publish salary guides, which can be helpful in this regard. Consider your budget, projected revenue growth and profitability. 3. Be prepared to negotiate You may need to enter negotiations with the employee on the pay rise amount. Your negotiating position will be influenced by factors such as the employee’s performance and the market rate salary for their role. Once you have considered the position, you may want to make a counteroffer on salary. This could be a performance-based bonus or a flexible working arrangement depending on the employee’s preference. 4. Consider alternatives to a pay rise Alternative benefits can help you hold on to a valuable employee even if your budget doesn’t allow you to grant a pay rise. Depending on the employee’s priorities, flexible hours, remote working or more generous annual leave could satisfy the employee even if their pay rise was declined. 5. Decide who communicates the decision The organisation must decide who informs the employee of your decision. In bigger businesses, it is likely that the HR department will handle the process, but in an SME, the employee’s line manager will have to communicate the decision. If you must decline a pay rise request from a valued employee because you do not have the budget to grant it, schedule a date in the future to review the situation. Whatever the decision, ensure the employee receives a thorough explanation outlining the organisation’s reasoning. This demonstrates that the organisation takes pay rise requests seriously. 6. Maintain a positive working relationship Organisations must balance employee expectations with the company’s financial constraints and market competitiveness. However, a transparent and fair process will help employees understand the reasoning behind the decision and maintain a positive working relationship. Nóra Cashe is the Litigation and Compliance Manager at Peninsula

Throughout the winter, Ireland’s economy has remained strong across all key macroeconomic indicators. However, a discourse is emerging that economic bottlenecks may hamper growth and competitiveness. Dr Daragh McGreal looks at what this will mean for the Irish economy Last year, despite challenges facing the global economy, Ireland’s economy was the fastest growing in Europe, with GDP growth of 12.2 percent and Modified Domestic Demand (MDD), used to measure the domestic economy, rising by 8.2 percent. The strong end to 2022 was driven by higher levels of investment by multinationals in intellectual property, continued growth in exports, higher private consumption (despite downbeat consumer sentiment) and a predominantly mild winter. Inflation and global uncertainty Despite these positives, there are several uncertainties, such as a mixed global outlook, tighter European Central Bank (ECB) monetary policy, higher levels of inflation, and service/infrastructure demand challenges. However, the government benefited from the exceptional level of tax receipts in 2022 that facilitated a budgetary surplus, allowing it to invest significantly in social transfers to cushion households against more severe impacts on their disposable incomes. Inflation since the start of 2023 has been somewhat more persistent than anticipated, standing at 8.1 percent in February, up from 7.5 percent in January. While there has been a fall in the cost of energy, inflation in other sectors remains high. As 2023 evolves, we expect inflation to fall potentially to 5 percent due to decreasing energy prices. Yet, while inflation may fall, the expected further monetary policy tightening from the ECB would cause issues for homeowners in Ireland, who will see mortgage and loan repayments increase and may drag on overall growth. How will the tech sector slowdown impact Ireland? Ireland relies on the tech sector for exports, jobs and tax revenue. Luckily, the negative impacts of the recent slowdown have been modest, with Ireland’s tech sector remaining relatively resilient. Total layoffs to date in Ireland have accounted for around 1 percent of the sector’s workforce, compared with approximately 1.5 to 2 percent globally. There’s also a growing fear that the Irish Exchequer is over-reliant on tax from multinationals. To create a buffer against this risk, the government has transferred billions from its October budgetary surplus to a ‘rainy day’ fund. While the government hopes that any feared risks never materialise, its overall approach has been prudent. Cautious optimism Ireland’s outlook remains positive in 2023 and beyond, with inflation expected to reduce. However, high prices and rising interest rates are still expected to drag on growth. There’s a sense of relief among policymakers that many of the pre-winter economic downside risks, such as supply chain disruption, did not materialise. Against the global backdrop of multiple negative risks, it would seem appropriate that the Irish approach is to prepare for a rainy day. Dr Daragh McGreal is Director and Head of Strategic Economics at KPMG

Roisin Magill explores the five most common issues encountered by the PSRA in Accountant's Reports so their clients can avoid delays and additional costs The Property Services Regulatory Authority (PSRA) plays a crucial role in regulating and overseeing the property services industry in Ireland. One of the PSRA's key responsibilities is to ensure that property service providers comply with the law, including the requirement to submit an annual Accountant’s Report for each company/business Licence Renewal Application. However, each year, the PSRA receives incomplete Accountant’s Reports, which impact the efficiency of the renewal process (both for your client and the PSRA) and require additional engagement with the licensee or their representative. To highlight the issues in incomplete Accountant’s Reports, the PSRA has compiled the following guidance. Include all addresses Section 1.2 of the Accountant’s Report requires the inclusion of all addresses at which the business is carried out. Frequently these details are omitted. Insert signature in all required places The accountant’s signature must be inserted at various points in the Accountant’s Report, namely in Section 4.2 and Appendices 1, 2, 3A, 3B, 4 and 5. A physical signature or a verified digital signature such as DocuSign is acceptable. Insert ‘Nil’ where applicable In Appendices 1 and 2 of the Accountant’s Report, where no matters of concern have been identified by the accountant, a ‘Nil’ response must be inserted in the appropriate sections. Complete all rows Appendix 3A (Client Account Balancing Statement) requires all rows to be completed fully and correctly. Each row requires a figure or, where there is no applicable figure, ‘Nil’ should be inserted in the response box. While the Client Account Balancing Statement is prepared by the licensee, the accountant should ensure that all figures in the statement are inserted correctly to arrive at the final balancing figure indicating whether there is a surplus or a deficit on the client account. Where the Accountant’s Report indicates that the client account balances, a ‘Nil’ response should be inserted to indicate that there is neither a surplus nor a deficit. Include full title In Appendix 4 (Name on Account) the full title of the client account should be included, confirming that the word ‘Client’ is in the title. Adhering to the above points when preparing your client’s Accountant’s Report for inclusion with your client’s Licence Renewal Application will ensure that your client’s application is processed in a timely manner without the requirement to submit an amended Report to the Authority, saving time and money. Roisin Magill is Assistant Principal Officer of Licensing at the Property Services Regulatory Authority

Mentorship is a form of leadership that can help to foster a sense of community and belonging within an organisation, writes Shay Dalton The concept of mentorship can be traced back to the character of the Mentor in Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus, King of Ithaca, asks his trusted companion, Mentor, to keep watch over his son, Telemachus, while he is away. Mentor acts as a guide to Telemachus, supporting him in his father’s absence. In the Middle Ages, mentoring became popular as part of the apprenticeship process in trade work. It wasn’t until the 1970s that mentorship made its way into the business world, however. Though the stakes may not be the same as they were in ancient Greek civilization, mentorship can play a key role in career growth and success. What is the role of a mentor? A mentor is someone with more experience than the mentee who passes along their knowledge and experience in the field in which the mentee aspires to work. The role of the mentor is to guide the mentee throughout their career progression. Anyone, at any stage in their career, can—and should—have a mentor. Benefits of mentorship According to a Harvard Business Review survey, 84 percent of CEOs with formal mentor relationships were less likely to make costly mistakes and more likely to become efficient in their roles. Seventy-one percent of CEOs who had formal mentoring arrangements said they “were certain that company performance had improved as a result”. Mentorships can also help with: Support systems: Mentorship offers a built-in support system, which is essential in any career or industry. It positively impacts mental health and improves self-confidence and self-esteem. In the early days of entrepreneurship, mentorship can alleviate feelings of loneliness and isolation. Accountability: A mentor holds their mentee accountable for their goals. This may mean verbally checking in on how their progress. It also means both parties hold one another accountable. If the mentor is not prioritising the mentorship, it is the mentee’s job to check-in. Accountability is critical to success. Confidence: Mentorship provides confidence as the mentee begins to develop their skills and autonomy. It also helps build leadership skills for both the mentor and mentee. Networking opportunities: Through time and experience, the mentor has developed relationships with others in their field. Mentors have a network of people to introduce to the mentee and can expose them to more career opportunities. Four phases of mentorship Kathy E. Kram, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Boston University, lists phases of the mentoring process in her research from the early eighties. According to Kram, mentorship is an ongoing exchange that moves between these four phases: Initiation phase is when the relationship is established, and trust is built between the mentee and mentor. Cultivation phase is when more frequent interactions and collaboration occurs (this stage can last two to five years). Separation phase is when the mentee begins to operate more independently from the mentor; and Redefinition phase is when the relationship shifts from mentorship to peer. The mentorship relationship should also have specific and measurable goals, frequent interaction, and actionable steps. There should be a clear desired outcome for both the mentee and the mentor. Mentorship as leadership Mentorship is a form of leadership. It is a way for those with more experience to give back to the company and leave behind a legacy from their own experiences. It can help to foster a sense of community and belonging within a corporation. Shay Dalton is the Managing Director of Lincoln 

To effectively determine future workforce requirements, employers must commit to longer planning horizons. Ger McDonough explains why Shifts in technology, workforce demographics, the automation of jobs and pressure on staffing budgets are just some of the trends shaping the future of the workforce. Businesses need to align strategy choices and workforce implications with reliable workforce data and analytics capability, to ensure that the number of staff and the right mix of skills and capabilities are considered. A mature approach to strategic workforce planning and meaningful people analytics will help leaders make informed decisions about their workforce for the long term. Planning for the future Workforce planning is an essential part of enterprise planning. Leaders must consider the capabilities they will need in the future and put in place firm plans for developing, buying or borrowing talent to ensure they can deliver against their strategy. Competition for the right talent remains tough. Organisations could fail to consider a range of external and internal drivers without an appropriate focus on scenario planning and impact modelling, increasing their workforce risks. Without a clear plan, organisations may continue to make short-term decisions based on affordability without considering long-term capability requirements. Making a future-ready workforce All roles will be affected by change over time—the question is: to what degree can this be managed in order to minimise adverse effects on the workforce? Digital transformation will profoundly affect the types of roles, business processes, customer behaviours and ways of working within our organisations. Leaders must ensure that their workforces are future-ready. By clearly understanding their current and future workforce capability, they can determine workforce gaps and implement strategies for skills development. Reassuringly, the results of PwC’s 2022 Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey show that companies are investing in their workforce through upskilling, with 40 percent of employees indicating that their employers are upskilling workers to address labour shortages. Four key actions for workforce planning To mature your workforce planning capability and look further into the future, we recommend taking action in four areas. 1. Align business strategy and capabilities with workforce strategy Workforce planning should be carried out alongside business planning in a two-track process. One is operational and aligned to business and budget planning. The other is a longer horizon, data-driven, strategic sweep that accounts for seismic shifts in workforce supply and demand. The second track must forecast the impact of environmental changes—including technological, generational and cultural—and define the required future workforce to meet these challenges. 2. Look for iterative improvements to your workforce planning process For organisations with workforce planning processes in place, analyse the strengths and weaknesses of your approach and look for opportunities to improve. The key is to concentrate less on cyclical workforce planning processes and more on continuous improvement to the overall approach. Value comes from embedding processes, measuring outcomes, digitally enabling the process wherever possible, using better data and building your workforce planning capability. 3. Accelerate the development of critical capabilities Once you have identified capability and capacity requirements, a tactical approach is essential to accelerate the development of critical capabilities by having a robust action plan to develop, buy, or borrow to address capability gaps. Successful organisations accelerate the development of critical capabilities to maximise investments and carefully consider the breadth of available reskilling, upskilling, and employment models. 4. Build confidence in your data for people-focused decisions Data-based insights can tell you a lot about your people and drive better decisions at every level. However, data is rarely harnessed and taken from analysis to action. HR must take the lead in building confidence in data across the employee lifecycle. With the correct data, you can create simple but powerful models to scenario plan and predict future needs. Ger McDonough is People & Organisation Partner at PwC

CEOs are taking a measured approach in an uncertain market and focusing on strategic investments that can deliver long-term value, writes Graham Reid According to the EY CEO Outlook Pulse survey, CEOs are determined to act decisively and forge ahead, delivering growth and competitive advantage for their business, despite a uniquely challenging economic environment. Investment strategies Ninety-seven percent of CEOs in the Americas, Europe and Asia have altered their planned investment strategies in response to recent global turbulence, with almost a third (32%) halting a planned investment. The volatile geopolitical environment has curtailed the relatively liberalised global trade era, at least for now. Restrictive regulatory trade and investment policies have overtaken COVID-related issues as the key reason for altering international investment plans. Indeed, 52 percent of CEOs cited restrictive trade policies and political policy uncertainty as key drivers behind their decisions to alter strategic investment plans. Just 19 percent pointed to pandemic-related issues. CEOs have reported that they have mapped out specific actions such as: delaying a planned investment until the situation improves (44%); supply chain reconfiguration (41%); relocation of operational assets (36%); and exiting businesses in certain markets (34%). CEOs response For CEOs, the pandemic continues to loom large regarding risks for future growth. Thirty-two percent of respondents consider a continuation or return of pandemic-related disruptions as a key threat to growth. Twenty-eight percent consider climate change impacts and pressures to build sustainability among the most significant risks they face. Other risks include: uncertain monetary policy direction; increasing cost of capital; higher input prices and inflation; rising cybersecurity risks; a further increase in geopolitical tensions; and the regionalisation and fragmentation of the global economy. The findings of the EY CEO Outlook Pulse survey point to a two-stranded response among CEOs to these challenges. First, they are tackling immediate issues through increased investment in internal functions such as finance, accounting, supply chain, and logistics, as well as in marketing and customer experience.  Second, CEOs are taking a longer-term view and investing in sustainability, including net zero, other environmental issues, and societal priorities. That longer horizon is also evidenced by intentions to continue investing in digital transformation, innovation, research and development, cybersecurity measures, and talent development. These findings demonstrate a calm and measured approach among CEOs as they face a period of uncertainty. Despite anticipating a global downturn and heightened geopolitical risks, CEOs are still intent on making strategic investments that can deliver long-term value for their business. Graham Reid is Corporate Finance Partner and Head of Markets at EY Ireland

Andrew Keating, CFO at Musgrave Group, looks back at his career progression and tells us the most important lessons he has learned along the way Tell us about your current role? What does it involve? I was appointed as the Chief Financial Officer of Musgrave Group earlier this year. We operate 12 food and beverage brands, including SuperValu, Centra, Donnybrook Fair and Frank & Honest coffee, and feed one-in-three people on the island of Ireland every day.  Through our partnership with entrepreneurial independent retailers, Musgrave Group is also the largest private sector employer in Ireland with over 40,000 colleagues.  My role involves partnering with our CEO, executive colleagues, and our Board of Directors to develop and execute Musgrave Group’s business strategy in line with our purpose: “Growing Good Business”.  In addition, I lead, motivate, and develop our finance team—and, very importantly, I aim to act as a role model for our values across the wider organisation. You have had a highly successful career. What do you attribute this to? I believe my career progression to date has been as a consequence of the value and leadership I have brought to the organisations I have worked with, for my colleagues, customers, and wider stakeholders.  Of course, strong and relevant technical skills are important, but I have also found that, as my career has progressed, these skills have really just become the “minimum ticket to the game”.  Equally important for me has been my investment in developing my leadership competencies in areas such as impact and influence, commercial focus, change management and inspiring people.  Developing these competencies to a decent level takes time, a lot of practice and a willingness to learn from your mistakes. It’s important, therefore, to start your journey as early as possible. I would encourage ambitious Chartered Accountants to compare the amount of time they have invested in their technical skills (through school, third level, if relevant, professional exams, CPD, etc.) with the amount of time and energy they have invested in developing and nurturing their leadership competencies.  What was the best career advice you ever received and why?  One piece of career advice that really inspires me is to bring your whole self to work every day. This contributes strongly to a trusting, inclusive and authentic environment.  So much of the value we bring to our organisations comes through our collaboration with other people—colleagues, customers, and wider stakeholders.  The more effective these relationships, the more valuable our contribution to the organisation will be, and the more successful our own careers.  What do you look for yourself when you are hiring? When hiring new colleagues, I’m drawn to individuals who, I believe, could have a long-term career with our company. I don’t tend to simply recruit for a particular vacancy or role.  Once I have determined that the individual can do the job on offer from a technical perspective, my priority is to understand their competencies and values.  I want to understand where they are on their journey in terms of developing an authentic leadership style, how they might contribute to an inclusive team environment, how they will collaborate with colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders, and if their values are consistent both with the values of the organisation and my own. You can read this article and more about your career in accountancy in the Accountancy Ireland Career Guide 2023.

Investing time and effort in networking can help young professionals to develop important relationships and progress faster in their careers. Sonya Boyce explains why Networking is defined, broadly speaking, as: “the action or process of interacting with others to exchange information and develop professional or social contacts”.  When we think of networking as a transactional, one-sided, and artificial relationship, however, it can make us feel slightly uncomfortable about the concept, as though we are somehow using someone for our own professional gain.  Through our work with clients at Mazars and our own experience, we can see that post-COVID-19, working habits have reinforced artificial or contrived perceptions of networking.  Many employees have lost the appetite to network effectively and it can be difficult to mobilise people to re-engage with their existing network and forge new connections in-person.   Just as those connections become even more important in a physically disconnected professional environment, it is key that people invest now in re-establishing and developing their networks in a meaningful way.  Unlocking your network effectively in a post-COVID-19 world could be the key to deeper engagement with colleagues, faster career development and more enjoyable working environments and relationships.  Benefits of networking A strong professional network can be a powerful asset in your career development, playing a critical role in progression, professional opportunities, and making work more enjoyable. Building a network is about relationships with colleagues, bosses, friends, industry colleagues or connections.  Your network isn’t just the relationships you have nurtured over time with friends and colleagues. It also includes more distant relationships and connections with thought leaders, business leaders, and “infrequent contacts”, such as casual acquaintances, and people you have met at conferences.  While not necessarily as close, these connections can be an invaluable part of your network and often possess information or links that can grow your reach and opportunity to learn.  This network, of both close and looser ties, developed over the course of your career, can support greater job mobility, while also being beneficial for employment opportunities, career progression and rewards. Top networking tips Developing a network or networking is not simply about attending conferences and events to “sell” yourself professionally.  Growing a network is about relationship building, developing trust and engaging with the needs and interests of the people you meet and connect with.  To help you enhance this network, especially if you find the process intimidating, here are some useful ideas to consider:  Networking as learning Developing a network is not about gaining connections immediately. Like any relationship, it takes time to develop trust and understanding. Therefore, considering networking as a learning exercise in which we engage is important. Understanding people’s “currencies” Different people are motivated and engaged in different ways. Allan R. Cohen and David L. Bradford, the organisation psychologists known for their work about the power of influencing, wrote extensively on understanding people’s currencies, in order to be able to influence others without authority. Their work identified five primary currencies:  Tasks Position Inspiration Relationship  Personal These five “currencies” can help us identify areas for potential collaboration with other people, develop our networks, and deepen our relationships with others. Networking to get ahead Building your network is just as much about those outside your organisation as it is about your colleagues inside the organisation. One Cornell University study on networking found a correlation between a person’s ability to engage with internal network and their professional opportunities.  In the study, lawyers whose personal views of networking were positive ended with more billable hours and greater choice over the projects they wished to work on, than their colleagues who were less inclined to network.  In essence, those who engage colleagues, make connections and put themselves forward—i.e., those willing and able to develop their personal networks—were more successful in their careers.  Overcoming your fear There is a great opportunity for employers to support and encourage employees to network.  Julia Hobsbawm, author of The Nowhere Office, has, for example, promoted the idea of a Chief Networks Officer (CNO) as a means for organisations to put focus and energy into ensuring that employees are getting the most value out of their connections. Hobsbawm says: “Really, the office is going to be good for two things—social networks and learning. Because people have been out of the office, the last thing you want  to do is to send them to a conference.” Putting networks, and networking, at the C-Suite level would send a clear message to employees and customers alike about the importance of relationships, consistent engagement, chance encounters and stretch projects or developmental opportunities that come from our direct and indirect network.  Sonya Boyce is HR and Organisational Development Consulting Director with Mazars in Ireland You can read this article and more about your career in accountancy in the Accountancy Ireland Career Guide 2023.

Your personal brand is a definer of success in your career and the most visible marker of you and what you stand for. Veronica Canning explains why My definition of a personal brand is, “what people say about you when you leave the room”. It’s not what you say it is. It’s what others say it is—what others say about you. You know what I mean. Usually, the description is short, pointed and deadly accurate. Irish people are good with words, and there’s none better when putting someone down. So, your personal brand is not what you say it is. It’s what others say it is. It is also a definer of success in your career as it is the most visible marker of you and what you stand for and, as such, it offers you the chance to take control of what people say about you in a corporate setting.  It can give you a distinct advantage in having an active input into building your career. Listen well the next time you hear the side comments after a meeting, especially when someone has been upset.  How many times have you sat in a room and heard someone being written off with one sentence, or heard someone else being damned with faint praise? Whether or not you believe you have a brand, such comments constitute it.  Think of the most memorable descriptions that you have heard. Remember that a similar comment could be attached to you. Often admiration is expressed in few words, like: ‘rising star’, ‘jet-propelled’, ‘one to watch’, ‘born gentleman’, or ‘straight as a die’. Everyone has a personal brand. It’s not something you can opt out of. It is inevitable, but the good news is that you can control whether yours is ‘purposeful’ or ‘accidental’.  A crucial point is that what your brand looks and feels like is up to you! I believe that when you take control of all aspects of your personal brand, you craft a purposeful one that is authentic and is an integral part of your career plan.  In addition, a purposeful brand is considerably more likely to be a positive one, as you will see as you read on. I often say this to audiences when speaking at conferences, and I see the odd sceptical face, but when I ask them if their personal brand is accidental or purposeful, the scepticism disappears.  They move to questioning which kind of personal brand they have. It is an enlightening moment when you realise that every day people are interacting with you and judging you by your appearance, accent, behaviours, moods and by your impact on them.  If you are unaware of this and just do and say what you want, as you want, without reference to those around you, you definitely do not have a purposeful personal brand. Exploring your personal brand begins with these four hard-core truths: 1. You are at the centre of your personal brand The number one truth is that you are at the centre of your personal brand. It is built on you and your values, it emanates from you, it is played out by your behaviours.  For it to succeed and contribute to your development it must be authentic. You may think you can fake it like the person who asks everyone how they are and wants to look like they care, but then rosters them on long hours, or ignores requests to take leave for important occasions like weddings and funerals.  They fake that they are good people managers and care about their staff, but their deeds show that all they care about is results. You may be good at faking it, but believe me, others will eventually see the real you.  The inconsistency between the two is surprisingly visible to observers. It is often given away in subliminal ways and expressed as a feeling or intuition.  There is a dissonance, and observers catch it. Someone will express a fear that the person “is not all they seem to be”, or “there is something off about that person” and the result is an accidental brand, not a purposeful one. 2. You are in charge of your personal brand You create your brand daily, and you are responsible for it. Every action you take further defines it. It is vital that you realise that it is not an optional extra that you may get to later, when you are happy, wealthy and wise.  It is a big part of you now, at this moment. There is no point blaming your colleagues or your boss if you are in difficulty at work. You are a key player in your own drama.  Often, when I work with people who hate their job and everyone they work with, they see the answer as leaving so they can start afresh in a new place.  I always remind them that the unfortunate reality is that they take themselves with them to the new job. It’s far too easy to blame everyone else when you are the problem. 3. It is your single biggest transportable asset As people move away from having a job for life, or being a ‘lifer’ in one company, and move to having a career made up of different parts–jobs, periods of transition, breaks for education or childcare and, increasingly, periods of unemployment–your brand becomes your most valuable transportable asset.  In an increasingly fluid workplace, you have to move to a ‘portfolio’ approach to your career. You are the only constant as you move through a career spanning decades.  You therefore need to concentrate on imagining yourself as a little enterprise, ‘You Incorporated’, with unique skills, competencies and a personal brand. 4. It is a vibrant, evolving part of you The core ‘you’ remains more or less the same, but your confidence, experience, self-knowledge, projection and the extent of your fame changes.  You will not have the same personal brand as a mid-level executive as, later, a successful senior executive – at least I hope you won’t. The key message is that you have a brand at every stage, and as you learn from your mistakes, you will continuously adjust it. The great thing about getting older is that although you keep making mistakes, they are different ones, and you avoid repeating the disasters of the earlier part of your career.   Veronica Canning is a motivational speaker executive mentor and consultant, and author of Your Brand: Advance your Career by Building a Personal Brand You can read this article and more about your career in accountancy in the Accountancy Ireland Career Guide 2023.

Getting ahead in a new organisation requires planning, commitment and a willingness to be seen and heard. David Manifold, CFO of eShopWorld, explains how to do it right The best advice I can give young professionals on how to hit the ground running in a new job is to ensure you put the right plan in place before your start date.  Having grown from a headcount of 350 to over 1,000 in three short years at eShopWorld, I’ve seen first-hand how putting a strong plan in place before their start date has really benefited some of our new hires.  This plan should clearly detail your goals and objectives, broken out over the short-, medium- and long-term.  These goals, and the timeline you put in place, must be realistic, and you should be prepared to revisit and update your plan on a regular basis as you continue your journey through the organisation. Identify the key stakeholders in the organisation. During your induction, ask for one-to-one time with these decision-makers. This will help you to gain an understanding of the business as a whole.  Today’s accountant needs to have a wide breadth of knowledge when it comes to the dynamics of an organisation and, indeed, the wider industry in which it operates. You need this to perform your role in guiding future strategic direction.  Taking the right insights from decision-makers at all levels of the business can provide a goldmine of valuable information. One critical piece of advice I have here is to take the time you need reflect on what this information means and to form your own ideas and conclusions. This will give you a strong basis for determining your own career trajectory within the organisation.  Time and again, I see candidates rush into a new role with bundles of enthusiasm, and ideas they haven’t fully thought through. Unfortunately, this can have consequences. First impressions are important in winning stakeholders over.  I would encourage people to take at least three months of this induction period to muse and reflect on the insights they’ve gathered, and perhaps socialise draft ideas with some of the key stakeholders they have identified, before bringing them to the wider organisation.  This will give you a sound foundation on which to build ideas that could genuinely impact the business and set you on the right path for progression. So, by now you have your plan with your goals and objectives, and you’ve committed to updating the plan as you progress. To help keep you on track, I would highly recommend scheduling in formal one-to-ones with your manager at the outset. You will need this in order to gauge your progress and performance and keep track of where you’re going.  If this isn’t standard practice in your organisation, do it yourself. This will demonstrate a willingness to accept feedback (both good and bad!) and, in my view, huge initiative. Asking your manager to commit time to supporting your personal development is equally important for the wider organisation. I’ve seen first-hand the benefits, from a company perspective, of devoting resources to helping employees grow and develop, beyond their immediate contribution to wider business goals. Giving employees a sense of ownership is key to embedding the right mindset and culture in an organisation. Starting any new position at any time in your career is often challenging. Everyone will have those familiar feelings of trepidation, but, for young professionals with less experience, it can be especially daunting.   Putting a plan in place with support from your manager can really help to lessen the impact of the learning curve, and separate you from the pack. Stick with it, commit—and, above all, good luck! David Manifold is Chief Financial Officer with eShopWorld (ESW), the global e-commerce company founded in Dublin. ESW offers a range of in-country cross-border solutions, which allow global brands and retailers to localise their online offering in markets all over the world. Prior to joining ESW in 2019, David managed the group finance function at Oasis Group and spent close to a decade with Aer Lingus as Director of Integration and Corporate Strategy. He is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland and holds an MBA. Setting goals for career progression Having a clear picture of what you want from your career is key to realising your ambitions, writes Caroline Frawley Goal setting is a huge part of my life. I am a big believer in writing down goals, putting in the work and being conscious of what I want to achieve. When it comes to new career opportunities, having a clear idea of what you want is a great tool when beginning a job search.  Making a wish list of your dream jobs can really help you target your search and narrow down and identify what you want.  You can go into as much detail as you want, including factors such as: Organisation The size of the business – Would you like to work for a multinational, a large Irish business or do you prefer being in the heart of a growing SME with exposure to all facets of the business? Progression opportunities What is your medium to long term plan? Would you like to be able to grow in your next role? Leader Who are the type of leaders that inspire you? Location How do you envisage your commute? Would you like a role closer to home? Is fully remote something you would consider or would you prefer to be onsite with more day-to-day interaction? Salary Is a jump in salary extremely important, or is finding the right role or getting a foot in the door of a particular organisation more important? Work life balance  We all want it, where does it rank in your priorities? Environment What type of office would you like to work in?  Can you see yourself sitting in the heart of a manufacturing facility or would you prefer a Shared Services Centre or a company’s headquarters? Skillset Do you want to continue using the skills within your current area of expertise or would you like to pivot into a new area? Flexibility What does flexibility mean to you? Is a job where you can work from home for some of your week crucial in your next move? Team Who are the type of people you want to spend the majority of your week collaborating with? Non-runners Are there any things that you don’t want in your next move? Not every role will tick all the boxes, but having a wish list will help narrow down your non negotiables.  This list can be really useful whether you are working with a recruiter or applying for roles directly.  It’s likely this list will evolve over time as you review different job specs and start the interview process across different businesses. And you never know, you might be one of the lucky ones, and a year from now, you might realise you have manifested your dream job. Caroline Frawley ACA works with Barden’s Mid-Senior Accounting Team, supporting accounting professionals in Munster You can read this article and more about your career in accountancy in the Accountancy Ireland Career Guide 2023.