Ms Olivia Buckley:

In fairness, the Department of Finance has done a good deal of work in terms of tax policy, with several consultations and papers released and tax policy conferences being held on an annual basis in recent years. As a consequence of Ireland's membership of the European Union, the OECD and other bodies, the topics the Deputy identified are starting to emerge. They are being looked at not just on a member state basis - we do not have all the expertise on the issue - but, rather, they are appearing on the agenda of the different councils and working groups of the European Parliament, the Commission the Council. Our participation in both the EU and the OECD means that there is a good degree of focus on that. There is also a growing appreciation in terms of some of the research. We are seeing the changing nature of economies, and the gig economy and the sharing economy are part of it.

That is why the OECD is looking at the changing nature of taxation in this area.

On the question of who pays what tax, a substantial amount of data is produced by the Revenue Commissioners and, during our own research for the purposes of budget preparation, we have access to a large amount of data. The Revenue Commissioners have invested a lot in technology and data analysis and have made a new appointment of a chief analytical officer in recent times, who kindly addressed our own annual conference two weeks ago. The information about who pays what tax, and at what percentage, is made publicly available and last week there was a report on corporation tax. We have studied personal tax and there is a lot of detail on the breakdown of the various salary brackets and whether people are paying tax on €70,000 or are exempt from tax.