Ms Josephine Feehily:

Such a breakdown is not available because we are an integrated organisation. Approximately 2,000 Revenue staff are involved in strategies in relation to compliance and enforcement. Officers in a district could be doing a tobacco blitz today, checking car registration numbers tomorrow and making visits to check VAT numbers next week. We do not compartmentalise their time in a way that would allow us to say that some of it is used to work on the tobacco issue. Approximately 2,000 staff are deployed across our compliance activities, ranging across all the risks we are trying to police, including income tax, VAT, excise and tobacco. We are an integrated organisation, which means we have the flexibility to put teams together for various purposes from time to time.

We work closely on this question at international level. We have a really good relationship with the European Anti-Fraud Office, which is known as OLAF. Those involved with that office will confirm that the effective management of this problem involves the development of international networks, the use of intelligence and the deployment of resources in relation to risky imports and risky cases. The same approach is taken to VAT, VIES or anything else. Our approach to managing it is about getting intelligence that tells us where to go looking. We have set out and published a strategy in relation to managing tobacco. We have engaged with the business community on it. We are working with OLAF at international level. We are containing it. I do not think that is a bad result in light of the environment we are in, the level of profits that can be made and the rules allowing for the free movement of goods and people. I would welcome concrete information from the business community that we could follow up. It is important to disaggregate data produced by the tobacco companies, which do not have the same objectives we have.