Dr. Se?n Healy:

I will add one further point. Social Justice Ireland has argued for a while that the tax expenditure issue should be part of the budget. In fact, given that the allocation of money in a particular way as a tax break for this, that, or the other is a decision that is voted through each year, it should form part of the budget arithmetic as well. Consequently, if we opt to do that, we must have a list of the actual tax expenditures. That must be put in place as well.

The other point I will make is to reiterate and support what Dr. Collins said about Revenue. It is an organisation I have great time for and it does a very good job. Maybe I am misreading this, but I think the Revenue Commissioners feel constricted in that if they were to provide more detailed analyses of issues such as tax expenditure and so on, which we are talking about here, they might be too closely identified with policy recommendation. That should be removed from them by asking them to give us the reports, data and information and we will make the decisions. They are a little concerned that they might be typecast or something and people would blame them for revealing these kinds of things when, in fact, we could all benefit from their expertise. This House, in particular, could benefit further from their expertise, although it is benefiting quite a lot at present.