Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 12 March 2015

Public Accounts Committee

Revenue Commissioners Investigation of HSBC Offshore Accounts

10:00 am

Mr. Niall Cody:

It is 270 maximum and practically none of those was linked to Ireland. I was reading a really interesting article about comparing the UK experience and the Irish experience. It was the direct opposite. The argument was why did the UK not investigate the same level of cases as Ireland did. On the HSBC data, we actually have probably the best record for following through on these particular data because we were ahead of them and also under our disclosure regime, anybody who had a Swiss account before 2002 could not avail of a voluntary disclosure. In the UK system, they can still avail of a voluntary disclosure.