Dr. Se?n Healy:

We have made submissions to and dealt with all the commissions, starting with the first taxation commission in the early 1980s. In this sense, it is interesting to reflect on this context. These commissions have operated in extraordinarily different ways and access to them has varied dramatically. For example, our experience of the previous tax commission was that access to it was much easier and its work seemed to us to be much more open as it proceeded compared with the more recent one which was quite difficult to access and that had what I would consider as a screen of civil servants between it and us. When we asked to engage with this commission, it was the secretariat - civil servants - who talked to us. These were civil servants from the Departments of Finance and-or Public Expenditure and Reform, or wherever the people who talked to us came from. We never got to meet with or speak to the members of the commission itself. I am referring to the most recent commission, whereas we did get to meet with and speak to the members of the previous commission.