Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It must also be asked how the Tax Appeals Commission got to this point and whether it is likely that there are other examples. That is the responsibility of Revenue as much as the Tax Appeals Commission because it is a sizable amount and anyone who has worked in accounts will know that if tax is not presented, then there is an ongoing dialogue with Revenue. That astonishes me but we may be losing sight of some of the cases that in the overall context seem fairly small but in most of our experiences they amount to quite large amounts of money also. Anything that is in the region of €1 million for example is quite a large bill to be outstanding. I have not gone through this in the kind of detail I want to and I know that money was allocated in the budget in response to the inadequacy in the commission's staffing and IT systems etc. and some time will be needed for that to settle in. The timing in terms of the value we get in having the commission back in again will be important. We must allow it to get its systems in place. It will probably be the beginning of next year before we are likely to have the commission here in any kind of fruitful way but we should have the Revenue Commissioners in at the same time.