Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late. On the Revenue correspondence, particularly the report on the use of data access requests to telecommunications companies, we see that in 2017 there were 40 such requests. That dropped to 26 in 2018 and according to the correspondence we received from Revenue, there have been no requests since then. Could the committee write to Revenue seeking clarification as to why that is the case? I have a suspicion it might relate to the introduction of the general data protection regulation, GDPR. Could we get clarification from Revenue on whether these types of requests simply will not be issued in the future and if that is the case, whether that points to a deficiency in the GDPR legislation and a need for it to be updated? Could we ask Revenue if there has been any engagement with the Government in this regard? As I mentioned, 66 requests have been referred. It would be useful if Revenue could inform us as to the amount recouped to date with respect to those 66 requests, if it has any data reflecting how often it would have made similar requests if this option remained open to them, and if it believes its ability to recoup tax owed to the State has been impacted by the GDPR legislation.