Ms Deirdre Donaghy:

There are a number of reasons this has happened. Part of the reason for the current backlog is that legacy appeals were transferred when the Tax Appeals Commission was established. Prior to 2016, the appeals function available to taxpayers was the Office of the Appeal Commissioners and while that was independent, it was still an organisation within the Revenue Commissioners. This was then restructured in 2016 and the Tax Appeals Commission was created to improve transparency. It was created as an independent body in its own right. One of the reasons for the increases in staffing is that the commission is now an independent body in its own right and must look after many issues such as its own governance and administration. In addition, at the time the TAC was formally created, as I said, more than 3,700 legacy appeals were transferred from Revenue to the TAC. A large part of the backlog is due to that number of legacy appeals coming over to the TAC.