Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 4 December 2014

Public Accounts Committee

Investigations by Revenue into Authorised Officers Report

12:20 pm

Ms Josephine Feehily:

I am not in a position to comment on the narrow question the Deputy is asking about a particular ledger. What I am satisfied about is that we did not get any new information or cases. We had considerably broader powers than the authorised officer. We had already used those powers and gone to the High Court. We had received 250,000 documents. I cannot tell the Deputy now what every one of those documents contained, but I can say that I am satisfied having probed the question with my officials. We had information and had settled on cases that needed an examination and investigation. We were attempting to see if there were more which is why we devoted so many subsequent hours and High Court orders to this. However, the information we received from him did not add any new cases to our Ansbacher project. That is what I am saying. What my colleague is telling me is that his information may have added to our knowledge but it did not add any new names to the cases we had identified as we were already using our powers.