Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 20 February 2014
Public Accounts Committee
2012 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 9 - Office of the Revenue Commissioners
Chapter 23 - Revenue Collection
Chapter 24 - Management of Revenue Debt
Chapter 25 - Taxpayer Compliance
Chapter 26 - Corporation Tax Losses
Chapter 27 - Tax Audit Settlements
1:00 pm
Ms Josephine Feehily:
This goes to the policy discussion we were having. Revenue takes the view that it has no role in deciding how the tax take is spent. Therefore for us, the tax collector, to tell taxpayers how their money will be spent is a tricky space for us because we have no control, nor should we, over how it is spent. We have not gone there, but we could, in the fullness of time, especially if there was an official one somewhere, provide a link and tell people there is information available on Government expenditure across sectors such as health and education. That is the kind of model the Deputy and publicpolicy.ie have used. That would be my preference because we have no role to play and it would be getting into the policy space, given that there is a Minister responsible for public expenditure. Not only is it not us, it is not even about our Minister. That would bring us into a place that I am not sure would be ours. As a public information piece, if there was an official calculator, the way to do it would be for us to tell people there was a link.