Ms Josephine Feehily:

The legal position is that we are a board of three commissioners. Our order states that the commissioners are appointed by the president of the executive council, who is the Taoiseach. In practice, however, we are appointed by the Government, like all Secretaries General. We are three officials at Secretary General level. We have the same terms and conditions as Secretaries General and we are appointed by the Taoiseach under statute but in practice by Government and the normal TLAC process for Secretaries General applies. Appointments in recent years have been publicly advertised and subject to TLAC.

By convention, one of the commissioners is appointed by the Minister for Finance to be the Accounting Officer for the purposes of the Comptroller and Auditor General Acts and the head of office for the purposes of the Public Service Management Acts. That individual is the chairman. Although the chairman does not have a legal status in the statute establishing Revenue but the files of the discussion of the first board in 1922 show that the Minister for Finance appointed one of the three commissioners as chairman. According to the narrative that used to be written years ago in the IPA diary, one of the three commissioners acted as chairman but the role is more than that because the chairman is appointed as Accounting Officer and head of office by the Minister.