Irish Life & Permanent tells us it made 475m after tax last year, but acknowledges that the correct figure would be only 353m if the company complied fully with international accounting standards. CRH made 762m after tax in 2004 . . . but told American shareholders that the real figure was 780m.

Even Ryanair's Michael O'Leary speaks from both sides of his mouth. He unveiled net profits of 267m in the year to March 2005. But when the budget airline totted up the debits and credits on the other side of the Atlantic an extra 16m fell to the bottom line.

The man charged with sorting out this Tower of Babel is David Tweedie, chairman of the London-based International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Tweedie's job is to hammer out a set of global reporting rules so that profits will be the same the world over, no matter whether they are made in Dublin, Tokyo or New York.

International diplomacy is often a thankless task, and Tweedie's efforts have earned him the title of Britain's most hated accountant because of all the toes he has had to step on in the interests of global harmony. Among those with whom he has clashed is Ireland's very own Charlie McCreevy.

While Tweedie drafts the accounting rules, they must be approved one-byone by the European Commission before taking effect in the European Union.

McCreevy, as the EU's internal market commissioner, is the man holding the rubber stamp in Brussels these days.

As a chartered accountant, McCreevy should be well qualified to pick through the nitty gritty of financial reporting.

And as a fellow Celt, Tweedie says he is on the commissioner's wavelength, which must give him a big advantage over many Brussels insiders who have difficulty grasping McCreevy's Kildare accent.

"Charlie is Irish, which makes it easy to do business, " Tweedie says. "He and Bertie Ahern are like men you'd meet in the pub. If Charlie wants to be difficult, then I can be difficult too. We understand each other . . . that's super."

Disagreements between Tweedie and McCreevy spilled into the open last year when the former minister for finance questioned the political accountability of the IASB. This is a sensitive topic for Tweedie because most of his $14m annual budget comes from the same multinational companies that must obey the rules he sets.

This creates the suspicion that, as the IASB's paymasters, these global behemoths are also calling the tune by nudging international standards in whatever direction suits them best.

Tweedie admits the present arrangement is "not ideal." The difficulties surrounding the funding arrangement came to a head when it emerged that the IASB had even sought money from Enron, a company that resorted to every accounting trick in the book to disguise its financial condition before its eventual collapse.

"Enron didn't give us a penny, " Tweedie insists. "Even if they had given us what we asked for, it would have only been $50,000 out of a total budget of $14m. There's an absolute limit on what anybody can give us so that no one has too much influence."

It would appear that corporate Ireland is not too bothered about currying favour with Tweedie, as no local company is listed among the IASB's benefactors . . . although the Central Bank does make a contribution.

Last week, the amiable Scot made a whistle-stop trip to Dublin to give a progress report to 1,200 accountancy boffins from across Europe gathered at UCD's Smurfit School of Business.

His audience learned that 100 countries are now on board Tweedie's transparency ship, requiring their listed companies to report under international standards. Canada and China are likely to sign up soon.

Even the US is playing ball, endorsing international standards on accountancy even if it finds many other global agreements, such as those on global warming, a little harder to swallow.

Tweedie's accountancy wars would have been the stuff of dreams for his predecessors when they set up the IASB back in 1973. They had the lofty aim of minting a common accounting language.

But without the teeth to enforce it, the IASB had about as much success as Esperanto.

It was in 2001 that Brussels decided that the board's work provided the perfect blueprint to unite financial reporting throughout Europe. The result was that, beginning last year, all 7,000 listed companies in the EU must use international standards to prepare their books.

The loudest anti-Tweedie squeals have come from companies such as IL&P whose results would be severely dented by a switch to these international standards. IL&P claims some of the rules were cobbled together too quickly and make a mockery of IL&P's true performance.

For now, the company is resorting to a pick-and-mix approach, obeying the rules it likes while quietly ignoring the rest.

Tweedie admits that some of his rules might not be completely watertight, with intellectual rigour sometimes forced to take a backseat to pragmatic issues such as looming deadlines and the need for compromise.

"Some standards are not perfect, I make no pretence about that, " he says.

"But we hope to come up with a completely different way of accounting for insurance by December or January.

We've looked at best practice in many countries but generally we've found that insurance accounting is pretty primitive worldwide. That's about to change quite dramatically."

Whether the promised changes pass muster with IL&P boss David Went remains to be seen.

Either way, Tweedie is determined to make corporate bosses more accountable. This means removing their ability to report a nice smooth earnings trend from year to year by creating an accountant's version of a slush fund, holding back some of the profits in good years to prop up the bottom line during leaner times.

"We plan to make the numbers more stark and more volatile, " he says. "A lot of the control that companies have over the numbers they report will disappear."

Tweedie is perhaps best known for his campaign to force corporate bosses to face up to the gaping deficits on many staff pension schemes by bringing the liability on to their balance sheets.

The inevitable result is that many companies, including AIB and Bank of Ireland, have rushed to limit their exposure by shutting their pension schemes to new recruits.

This erosion in retirement benefits has put Tweedie in the firing line, with the Daily Mail branding him as the man who destroyed our pensions. But he believes this is simply shooting the messenger.

"I'm not destroying anybody's pensions, all I'm doing is measuring them, " he says. "Management has made promises to their workers by giving them pension entitlements. Now they'll have to back them up."

This determination that sticky problems should not be swept under the carpet has ensured Tweedie's credentials as the world's accounting policeman. But it probably means he will never shed the title as its most hated accountant.

THE MAN & HIS COMPANY DAVID TWEEDIE
Age: 62
Education: Edinburgh University; Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland
Career: Partner in KPMG; chairman of the UK's Accounting Standards Board (1990-2000); chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (2001 to date)

INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING STANDARDS BOARD Founded: 1973 Budget: $14.9m (2004) Standards Produced: 41 (2004)