Mr. Niall Cody:

The Deputy is right. We have discussed our compliance programmes here a good few times. Over recent years we have probably become more sophisticated in that we now do fewer audits and more targeted risk-based interventions. We obviously retain the right and need to do a significant number of audits but we are increasingly targeting single issues where there are risk indicators based on third party information. I believe 2014 was the first year in which there was a comprehensive review of expenditure. We made a submission to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform around that comprehensive review of expenditure. In that submission we said that the return on investment from a fully-trained Revenue auditor is in the region of 10:1. In the last number of budgets and Estimates processes, the Minister has supported that case. While Deputy Michael Noonan was Minister he supported the case to Deputy Paschal Donohoe, who was Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. The Minister is now supporting that case to himself. In the last four budgets we have been allocated additional resources but we have been given back a compliance dividend in the budget arithmetic. That is the process. We have our risk intelligence systems and carry out targeted risk-based audits. We have discussed the return on targeted risk-based audits as opposed to the random audit programme here. Approximately 70% of risk-based audits produce a yield compared to less than 30% of random audits. In random audits the average yield is much lower than in targeted audits.