John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Could the Department not establish a role? Revenue, under the Department of Finance, is the collector of taxes. Could the Department not have a role where it sees taxes being inappropriately spent by, for instance, chasing and beating down a citizen, with a judge having to side with the citizen. Not only did the judge say that the Department was wrong, the judge said that the integrity of the prosecution was under question. That case still remains unresolved. Should there not be some sort of section within the Department that could examine the case? It is not just that case; there are others. When we speak to the Department, it will say that the Director of Public Prosecutions or someone else decided to take the case. We do not get an answer and, therefore, we cannot address the rights of the citizen. Someone has to take this on. As someone who pays his taxes, I have questions, as I am sure would anyone who pays taxes in the country, about how those taxes are spent. Where issues such as this arise, there is an obligation on Government to protect the people it represents. Protecting them against the State is something we need to take far more seriously.