Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is great that such a question has generated so much enthusiasm. We have the right group in the room so that is good.

I will move on to capital acquisitions tax. I note the ESRI's statement referenced the difficulty involved in wealth taxes that can arise from "potential negative incentives to move financial assets [which] pose implementation challenges". For that reason, the commission supports taxes on capital assets, such as capital acquisitions tax on property assets. This is something that has come up a bit in ordinary conversation. Why does the ESRI not believe an incentive might be present for someone with significant property assets to move them into a trust, for example, to dodge capital acquisitions tax? During a recent conversation I had with the officials from the Department of Justice, I think at this committee, I raised the concern about legal trusts being used as vehicles to hide assets and disguise certain transactions. The officials told me it is an issue of concern for them. With Ireland being the last common law jurisdiction in the EU, does the ESRI believe greater transparency oversight will be needed, when it comes to ownership of such trusts, if we are to increase capital taxation?