Mr. Brian Keegan:

We also need to distinguish between what is genuinely harmful to the tax payer and not. I do not subscribe to the notion that because somebody is in dispute with the Revenue Commissioners everybody will assume he or she is a defaulter. The public is far too clever for that. It is well able to distinguish between somebody who is genuinely in tax default and somebody who has a dispute over the way his or her tax affairs are being handled.

I take Deputy O’Donnell’s point that from time to time in the course of appeal hearings matters which may be commercially sensitive might be discussed, such as the kind of margins the taxpayer’s business has, or some research and development it is engaging in which, if it was discussed in open court, could damage the business. We need to be careful when we talk about hearings in open court that we do not damage those kinds of commercial considerations.

One point in the heads of the Bill that might be worthy of further exploration is that the appeal commissioners are given extraordinary discretion in this proposed Bill as to what should or should not be publishable, who can or cannot attend an appeal hearing, and we would, as a minimum, like to see those powers a little more tightly defined and a little better scoped. That kind of approach might just as easily help deal with the kind of concerns rightly expressed about tax payer confidentiality.