Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will come to the work programme in a few minutes. I do not think they are due to appear in the immediate future. We will note and publish that correspondence.

The next item is No. 2447, dated 10 October 2019, from Ms Lorna Gallagher, appeals commissioner at the Tax Appeals Commission, responding to our request for an information note and further details on the ten highest value appeals in the bi-monthly progress report provided to the committee. We asked the commission to identify the industry sectors of these high appeals. The commission states it cannot do so because that might identify the parties involved in the big sectors. The level of debt at the tax appeals commission has been increasing. The commission was established in March 2016 and by the end of 2016 the quantum of cases on hand was €1.4 billion. It then got €600 million of new cases, meaning that at the end of 2017 there was €2 billion in outstanding cases on its desk. In 2018, it had five high value appeals which brought the debt to €4 billion. Those cases had a value of €2 billion between them. Obviously, if the commission were to identify the sector, it would make the organisations in question easily identifiable. Of interest is that to date in 2019 the quantum of appeals closed by the commission has exceeded the quantum of new appeals received by €300 million, resulting in a current balance of appeals on hand of approximately €3.7 billion. These are significant figures. Obviously, five companies account for over 50% of the overall figure.