Dr. Barra Roantree:

The tax strategy group papers that come out in autumn each year are like tax nerd Christmas. It is an exciting time in our lives when we can go through all of them. Some useful information is included in these papers with regard to setting out an intention of what the Government is looking at. It is useful for scrutiny purposes that they are put out there well in advance of the budget so we can have a discussion in the Houses of the Oireachtas and so we in society have time to scrutinise, consider and think about them. From this point of view, it would be welcome if the tax expenditure evaluation papers came out over the summer and autumn prior to the budget. It is important to commend the Department of Finance on putting out the tax strategy group papers so early. It was a great decision and it has improved the quality of debate on this quite a lot.

There is another specific suggestion the committee might take up. As Dr. Collins said, these tax expenditures are complex and doing a rigorous evaluation is also incredibly complex and difficult and we should not lose sight of this. However, this is a case in and of itself for building up capacity and expertise to be able to deal with these issues. From this point of view, perhaps we could have a dedicated tax expenditure evaluation unit within the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service. Perhaps it might be better somewhere else. This is the type of thing we should look at to ensure these evaluations are as good as they can be. I reiterate that far too often they ask beneficiaries of reliefs whether a relief should continue. There is no surprise as to what the answer to this often is.