Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Our concern is about taxpayers' money from the Vote going into that account. Consider what normal people and businesses must go through to get tax clearance certificates to receive any funding from the State, be it an older person trying to get a mobility grant in respect of his or her house, a business seeking to receive State funding or a State body. It is concerning that the Garda is overseeing an entity - the form of which is not known - that cannot furnish a tax clearance certificate from Revenue.

The Commissioner referred to GSOC investigating potential fraud issues. Surely someone must be held to account for letting a situation evolve in the Garda Síochána in which a tax number did not have a tax clearance certificate even though, in theory, it was in possession of State funding in some form or other having, for example, grown within one of the entities or having come directly from the State. Given that Ms O'Sullivan is the Commissioner and Accounting Officer for the Garda, does she foresee there being action in terms of prosecutions? If a private sector entity could not obtain a tax clearance certificate, the consequences for it would be stark.