Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 February 2013

Public Accounts Committee

2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 9 - Office of the Revenue Commissioners
Chapter 7 - Audit of Revenue 2011
Chapter 8 - Revenue Outturn 2011
Chapter 9 - Revenue Debt Collection
Chapter 10 - Increasing Tax Compliance

12:20 pm

Ms Josephine Feehily:

Prosecutions are more likely to arise at the end of a very long compliance campaign in which one has an under-declaration or in other words, a lie. It will be a major lie because we risk-assess our prosecution cases. It is not even on my radar at this point, frankly, to figure out what kind of cases might, sometime, after a couple of years, find their way into our prosecution programme. It is not even on our radar. The only example I can possibly think of is someone who declares a house that is worth more than €1 million and tells a barefaced lie by calling it a couple of hundred thousand euro. As I stated earlier, the compliance treatment we will apply to the different cohorts will be something we will work out when we see the shape of the non-engagement and the extent of the non-compliance. I do not think we can plan for the extreme 0.00001%. At this stage of the project would never plan anyway. This simply is not on our radar at this point. I am not saying that we will not do it but it is not on our radar at this point.