Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to read the highlights of this into the public record so that the public will know what we are talking about. There were three cases listed in a document that we got the last time with the Tax Appeals Commission with amounts totalling €361 million that were in dispute and we asked for a note on each of the three cases. The first case has an amount of €138 million under appeal. The commission says that it is on hold for the next few months as parties are currently in discussions with a view to settling that issue. There is another case involving €119 million and the commission is saying that it is ready to be scheduled for a hearing shortly. There is a third case with a value of over €100 million which the commission says is proceeding through the appeals system. There are three cases adding up to €361 million. Before we come to our periodic report we will need an update on those three cases. We cannot have a situation of €361 million from three organisations hanging out there without the Committee of Public Accounts taking action. We deal with expenditure but we also want to make sure that taxes are collected properly and we want to make sure that is done as expeditiously as possible.

Then we asked for figures for the cases where the amount is between €10 million and €100 million and there are 14 of those. One case is proceeding with a value of €68 million. Four more are on hold as the parties are in discussions and they have a combined value of €100 million. There are six other cases scheduled for hearings with a collective value of €140 million. There is a case on hold pending a linked appeal worth €20 million, another case with determination expected to be completed by the end of this year worth €12 million and a case that has been settled for €11 million. I do not know the outcome of that as the commission just says that it was settled.

It was horrific for me to see that there are 17 cases there involving well over €700 million, only one of them has been settled since we raised it and one of them is expected to be completed this year. The letter is actually telling us that 15 of the 17, which approximately amount to the total of €700 million, will run into next year at least without even giving a suggestion of a closing date. There are 61 other cases with a value of an average of €2.5 million apiece still in the system and only a handful of those have been settled. We will want a timeline on these every second month because we will not sit here with €876 million hanging there without a date even being proffered for when it might be dealt with.