Ms Josephine Feehily:

The Revenue Commissioners often discuss this issue with commissioners from other countries when we meet. We are not the best at figuring out the marginal return. However, this work has been done in other countries. If dedicated resources are put into just audit and compliance - not for all of Revenue's work - the international benchmarks are for a return of between one to ten and one to 12. The UK uses one to 11. I wish to emphasise that not every person coming into Revenue can make such a return. It is work for qualified, trained and dedicated auditors.

We have carried out some experiments on the debt recovery side. We have implemented the recommendations in respect of our management information on debt such as the age analysis. This has resulted in very interesting new information about debt management. An overtime project cost €200,000 but this resulted in a collection of €4.5 million. We used some of the new data from the recommendations in the report.

When our staff numbers began to be reduced, we made a strategic decision corporately that we would bias the reductions and not apply them evenly. We have maintained staffing in debt recovery, in collection, in IT and in what we call excise enforcement, the uniformed staff. Early in the period the Collector General proposed to us that if we gave him 30 staff he could collect a lot of money. We begged, borrowed and stole 30 staff from other parts of Revenue. The process took a year. By using some of the new management information and for an investment of 30 staff, we have collected €79 million. The Collector General would not have had enough staff to reach these tiers of debt. Those examples are indicative backup figures to support that assertion. I admit that we are not the best at the marginal return for every extra auditor but I know that other commissioners have the same difficulty. We need to improve our management information.