Mr. Niall Cody:

In last year's package on offshore activity, we sought the removal of the right to disclosure. The Minister announced a package of measures in the context of the budget. One of them was the creation of an offence of strict liability. Essentially, if one had an offshore account which was party to tax evasion, one would be liable. This goes back to Deputy Pearse Doherty's question about why we did not prosecute when somebody definitely had an account. The bar for criminal prosecution is high. It is a criminal prosecution so one must prove a mens reaand one must have evidence. We put forward a proposal and the Minister announced in the budget that it would be part of the package. When it came to the Finance Bill and drafting the provision, however, the Parliamentary Counsel and the Office of the Attorney General had a problem with it, essentially because of the Constitution. The UK had introduced a similar provision, but because of its different legal framework and because of decisions in the C case, it did not proceed here. It was not a result of the Minister opposing it however. One of the things we need to look at the end of this process is whether there are other approaches. The UK made a change recently which made it an offence for someone not to make a correction in a particular year. We will continue to look at that. The huge change is around the information we are getting. We are not dependent on court orders to find out something. We are now getting a huge exchange of information.

It is very interesting that the matching of the data is better because this is all linked into the anti-money laundering directives and the need to know one's customer. At one time, people would have used different versions of their name and address to mask matching.