Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 14 December 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Paradise Papers (Resumed): Allied Irish Banks

9:30 am

Mr. Bernard Byrne:

He received a letter.

What I said was that he received the letter, which was in agreed form, I suspect, between the Revenue Commissioners and themselves, encouraging people to make a qualified disclosure. As I said in my opening statement, the reason for this was to encourage anyone who could and would be willing to come forward to create the beginning of the process, which ultimately resulted in the Revenue raising the €1 billion mentioned by the chairman of the Revenue Commissioners. I think he was simply following a request, which appears sensible in the context of encouraging people to make a qualified disclosure. That is a system that exists under the Taxes Acts and it has been used many times in many circumstances effectively to start a process of encouraging people to come forward. I understand that not that long ago, Revenue initiated a similar process in respect of overseas accounts in different jurisdictions. It is part of the Revenue toolkit. I did not read much more into it than that but perhaps my perspective is incorrect.

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