Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

My final point is this. I am sure that Deputy Peter Burke and a number of other members, Deputy Michael McGrath for instance, know that there are perfectly easy ways of avoiding this situation, firstly by selling a company's underlying shares - an option unavailable, incidentally, to the kind of small family farm holding that Deputy Fitzmaurice mentioned - or secondly through various devices for resting contracts rather than completing contracts already in the field. I do not care if the Minister of State is annoyed at this or not. All of this amounts to a significantly unfair potential advantage to very wealthy people with tax advisors who are part of a circle of information and are able to get access to it. The people mentioned in the various amendments, however, are highly unlikely to have that kind of access unless they get up very early on a Sunday morning to buy the newspapers and read the information there. The Minister can bet his bottom dollar that if that information was available to journalists on the Saturday or Sunday it was almost certainly available to selected individuals much earlier in the week, whether that was to test out his credibility or not.

What we are talking about here is an examination. Even if the proposals made by various Deputies here are not agreed to, the Revenue Commissioners as an independent body ought to look at this matter. There ought to be a fair deal for the small taxpayer, be he or she in rural Ireland or indeed running a small business in urban Ireland. There should be no one particular flow of information that might potentially benefit very well-off people with the wherewithal to afford extensive tax advice.