Ms Avine Mcnally:

I would like to pick up on some of the other points. Obviously I concur with what Mr. Noonan has just said. In regard to the awareness campaign, as with any of these issues it is about the message one is trying to get across. People's opinions, though not shared by everybody, will come round to this way of thinking. To be honest, I have never looked at any research on the impact on turnaround of a television campaign. However, looking at the figures the Department of Social Protection has, one sees an increase of 11,000 telephone calls to its fraud line in the past 12 months, making a total of 28,000 calls a year. I believe we are beginning to see people getting a little bit frustrated and annoyed with others cheating or trying to cheat the system. This approach will not win everybody over but I believe we are beginning to see people's mindsets moving towards being more in favour of calling people out and perhaps reporting what is going on.

Deputy Calleary asked what was happening in other jurisdictions. The UK has set up a hidden economy monitoring group, some of whose suggestions are very much echoed by us. It believed an awareness campaign was something worth considering and also suggested the need to look again at the tax system, taking the attitude that if it is more favourable for people to be involved in a taxable regime then they will do so rather than stay in the black economy. This group has also undertaken huge work in assessing the barriers people face in getting from the black economy into the formal economy. In other words, that is a regime which reduces the burden of setting up businesses correctly. I realise we have done a lot of work in Ireland on this but I offer this material to give an idea of what our closest neighbour is doing.