Ms Cora O'Brien:

Thank you Deputy. The Appeal Commissioners' system is not a court, it is an administrative adjudication process. Whereas there are certain rules around publication and public hearings that are right and proper for a court, this is a process that happens before one gets to court.

I will deal with the points raised earlier. If a taxpayer has a dispute with Revenue - one of my colleagues mentioned the various routes open to the taxpayer- we must strike a balance between the rights of the taxpayer and the issue of transparency. If there is a disagreement on a point of law, the taxpayer has only one choice, he or she must go to the Appeal Commissioners. The Appeal Commissioners' process is independent and is set in a pre-court setting where an independent person makes a decision or an adjudication. That has worked very well up to now. We have a very good compliance rate in this country. Part of the reason is that there is a respect for taxpayer confidentiality. My concern is with perception, something that is very hard to gauge. When a taxpayer gets an assessment from Revenue, he or she must decide whether to appeal it. In reaching that decision, he or she is setting out on a path which could ultimately lead him or her to the High Court. Some taxpayers will be prepared and will be able to afford to go all the way. That is their choice.

However, there is an interim process, where one can have the facts of the case heard and as long as the facts are published, what is including the name of the taxpayer going to add to the information that is in the public domain? One can have a transparent process and everybody acknowledges the need for a such process because we all need to find out what is happening in the cases that go to the Appeal Commissioners. We do not even know how many cases are going through in a year at this stage. It could be 50 or up to 300 cases. It is very important to have the process, and the facts and the decisions of the cases published. However, our members, who are working with taxpayers and dealing with the day-to-day practicality of facing the possibility of having all of one's data in the public domain, question whether the taxpayer should be named publicly.