Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 9 May 2013

Public Accounts Committee

2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 11: VAT on Intra-Community Trade

11:00 am

Ms Josephine Feehily:

The first update regarding recommendation No. 11.4 is that we have done what was recommended and re-examined a representative sample of cases. The new auto commonality system picked up all of the appropriate relationships. We have implemented the recommendation.

The social network analysis is something new and exciting. I think this is the future for us regarding a lot of our work. I just mentioned the SNA to show we are moving ahead of the recommendation using technology. SNA is a tool. I am not an IT person so do not ask me to explain how it works but I have seen the product from it. This is a piece of technology that will wander around all of Revenue's databases picking up connections between entities. By entities I mean businesses, mobile phone numbers, bank accounts, names and addresses and all sorts of interesting things.