Dr. Colm O'Reardon:

It is for all Departments. Revenue does collect a huge amount of information. That is always an ongoing challenge. Data is expensive and you have to prioritise the data you want to collect. I might pass back to Ms Vaughan, who has particular expertise in the area of data and statistics. Ms Vaughan would be better placed than I am to comment on that. It falls to all Departments to think about what data is collected to prioritise the collection of data. There is a system within Government for that prioritisation and for having a strategic approach.

The other point I would make is the one Dr. Roantree made that if you set up a commission on taxation and welfare you cannot suddenly generate the data and it has to be there. Evidence is data in the hands of people who know how to analyse it and, therefore, you need to support research programmes. We in the Department have a research programme which we support with the ESRI where we support the analysis of data as well.

Building up evidence over time is really important. We, as a commission secretariat, would not be in a position to instantaneously summon up evidence in the course of a 13-month exercise. We rely on the past ten or 15 years of work done by people in the ESRI and by academics in the area. We obviously look at that evidence and interrogate it, but you have to support public-interest research on an ongoing basis. There is research that Departments look for because they want answers to particular questions but you also have to support research that the researcher wants to do. We need an infrastructure and an ecosystem of research. However, I am cutting across others who are far more knowledgeable than I in this area.