Mr. Niall Cody:

I cannot give the Deputy a figure for the cost of the random audit programme. We do 400 audits. The scale of some of the cases are very short because they are picked at random. Obviously, the small number of yielding cases take time. In the comprehensive review of expenditure that took place in 2014, we talked about how for every €1 spent on an auditor, we would expect to bring in €10.

It is a multiple of ten to one. It becomes an opportunity cost if the auditor spends time doing cases with an average yield, even taking the average yield of 18 as opposed to an average yield of 72. Across the board of our audit and risk management interventions we try to benchmark this. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, does a lot of studies on benchmarking across tax authorities. A year ago the audit had a slightly higher return than the risk management interventions. For the first time, this year, the risk management interventions are slightly higher than the audit. It is so affected by outliers and voluntary disclosure. This is where the figures that are put into the budget around an additional 50 staff and the result of that come in. It depends on their level of training but the great thing about what has happened over the past few years to get the facility to increase our numbers is that there are people who came in two years ago who are coming out fully trained now. We will see the benefit of that next year and thereafter.