Mr. Sorley McCaughey:

In the early days of the SDGs, there was a good reference to tax and it was a battle that was lost for people who wanted to have it in. The only real reference, apart from domestic resource mobilisation as being important as an element to finance development, and the only other element we are really focusing on is the definition around what constitutes an illicit financial flow. At present, it really only applies to clearly illegal practice like money laundering and tax evasion. It ignores the very large grey area, but the potentially very damaging area of tax avoidance, which is a very murky area where it is only legal until it is proven that it is illegal. That is an area where we would like to see the definition expanded so that it can include some of these tax avoidance schemes which have such a negative impact on developing countries. That is an ongoing battle and it is one on which Christian Aid is very much to the fore to expand that definition.

In response to Deputy Niall Collins, the relationship between Christian Aid and the Department of Finance is very good, and it has been since 2007. This report was always meant as a constructive policy input into its work in the area. The Department was under no obligation to do it. It responded to civil society and it also responded to a changing international tax environment whereby Ireland was in the spotlight a lot. It probably saw, sensibly, that this was something it could do.

It would be good to get the Department in here to respond because I do not feel well placed to speak on its behalf. Its position is largely that this was our attempt at doing something that had barely been done before. We acknowledge that methodologically there could well be gaps, so it might have been done differently. The Department states that this was the methodology of the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation, IBFD, which is a very well respected international body in the Netherlands. There is an issue in terms of the ownership of this research. For us, the Department of Finance owns it. The Department managed the process and signed off on the methodology but sometimes when speaking to the Department, I am told the IBFD did this, it carried it out and that I should ask address my questions to it. We have asked the IBFD about the gaps we identified but we have not really got responses.