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:

As I have said, I am slightly constrained in that there are relatively small numbers. The information is in the possession of the international consortium of investigative journalists, ICIJ, and of newspapers so I have to be very careful. What we have set out in our report is that there were 19 settlements. Nine of them were published in the quarterly defaulters list. To be published in the quarterly defaulters list, there has to be tax, interest and penalties, and the penalty has to be in excess of 15% of the tax liability. All those nine cases would have met the criteria for publication, so there would be underlying tax default issues in those nine settlements.