Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The €13 billion or so must be recalculated by the Irish authorities so that they can arrive at a figure and very helpfully, the Commission has given an estimate of what that figure is. Revenue will have to recalculate it and must calculate the interest. There have been reports, for example, that the interest may be €1.5 billion. Others have calculated that it should be in the region of €6 billion if we were to use what exists in our own tax code. What focus will the Commission be placing on the calculation by the Revenue authorities in terms of the overall sum of back tax that is paid plus the interest portion? Can the Commissioner talk about the fact that there is a delay in having that transferred to an escrow account? Indeed, just last week the Minister for Finance put on the record of the Parliament, in an answer to me, that it is still under consideration as to whether an escrow account will be used and that the details of that escrow account will be confidential, which means we may not know for a long period of time what is the figure that goes into the account, if it does so at all.