Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Also, he has to provide for the Christmas bonus out of current year resources. Effectively, we are talking about a great deal of money coming through simply because of the growth in the economy, notwithstanding that the income tax profiles are behind.

Moving on to another area, as the previous speaker said, if we are going to expand services to the level that the Minister spoke of, he may need to raise taxes in certain areas. The Government has indicated with respect to a sugar tax and also excise duties, but I imagine excise duties are almost reaching the point of being maxed out in terms of tax take. Has the Minister at this point scoped any tax efficiency measures which would provide for the closure of areas of evasion and loopholes, which, to be honest, as the Minister is aware, are inevitable? Tax is like a chess game - the Minister writes a finance Bill and clever people sit down and work out how to circumvent it. That is the way it works in all the legal and accounting offices in town. This time last year, when I asked the Minister's predecessor about the issues arising from the question of offshore assets, he suggested that would yield €20 million or €30 million. In fact, in terms of the partial returns to date in the report - a copy of which I have got and which was given to the committee, for which I am grateful - the yield was actually €79 million and the full extent of offshore assets has not yet been trawled from the details I received from the Minister's Department.

I refer to another example, that of the dwelling house exemption introduced in the 1990s for a brother and sister living in a house together. They did not have a marital relationship or a child-parent relationship, so where when one died, the other ended up paying tax. That was something I raised with the Minister's predecessor.

The report I got recently showed an average tax avoidance of more than €70 million a year, approximately €216 million during the past few years. I want to ask the Minister-----