Mr. Niall Cody:

If it would help the committee, I have thought about this question. After I was appointed to my position, the following Monday week The Irish Timescovered the story and the ICIJ had a fairly high-profile, really interesting story. I was given responsibility as accounting officer for Revenue at the start of January and was appointed chairman on 1 February.

Since my appointment I have carried out a restructuring of responsibilities at senior level within the organisation. This restructuring included a realignment of responsibility for Revenue's investigation and prosecution division. When the story broke I asked the newly appointed head of IPD, the investigation and prosecution division, to lead a team to review our handling of the data contained on the HSBC disk and to evaluate the investigation that had been carried out. This team re-examined the data on the disk to evaluate the investigation and the conduct of the investigation that had been carried out. This review found that a robust approach had been followed. I wish to add that I have been in Revenue all my life - at least it seems like all my life - but I was very confident that a rigorous approach had been taken to the data. This was based on Revenue's track records since 1998 in dealing with special investigations, and in particular, on the records of the offshore assets group and such investigations. The principal officer and his team take their work seriously and the data sources regarding offshore accounts are their bread and butter. They actively seek out new sources of data regarding offshore accounts as evidenced by the number of High Court orders they have successfully sought over the years.

The principal officer in charge of the unit told me a little story about Swiss accounts. Back in 2009 when we looked for High Court orders directing Irish financial institutions to provide details of transfers to and from Swiss bank accounts, he prepared an affidavit in which he actually incorporated an advertisement that was placed by a Swiss bank in The IrishTimes, in the midst of our pursuit of offshore accounts. This was an expensive advertisement in which the bank was saying, more or less, "Do you want to lodge your money offshore with us?". The bank's advertisement did not mention tax evasion nor any kind of hint that there was anything untoward about it but emphasised the bank's secrecy in Switzerland. While we were in the midst of pursuing accounts in the Isle of Man and Jersey, one of the Swiss banks - not HSBC - was advertising in one of our newspapers the advantages of bank secrecy in Switzerland. We included that advertisement in our affidavit for the High Court order which we were granted.

When the story broke that the French tax administration had got access to this data, my predecessor immediately wrote to it. We reported on this in our 2010 annual report and in the 2012 meeting of the PAC, the then Chairman had a short discussion about the HSBC disk with the members. I think it was Deputy Murphy at the time. We are very anxious to get these stories of our activities out there because this is what helps voluntary compliance. Knowing the principal officer and the team in charge of these offshore assets I know that they take their work seriously. Last week, the Sunday Business Posthad an article which stated that a person getting a letter from Revenue will look at the top of the envelope to see if it has come from a tax district or if it is the case that it has come from the investigations and prosecution division, that person will get professional and legal advice. That is the first step that one of the practitioners was recommending a person should do. The people who are dealing with this are serious about what they do, they are good at what they do and I was fairly confident that they would have followed it through to the end. I am satisfied but that is not to say that there are not cases currently involved in tax evasion using offshore accounts. I refer to the work that is happening at OECD level, with the IRS in the US and the Foreign Account Tax Compliant Act, FATCA, and bank secrecy. Bank secrecy hinders our work. We are an early adopter of FATCA. We are very proactive at OECD and EU level in regard to automatic exchange of information. The work of our offshore assets unit has been the model for most other countries. We are early movers in this area and countries have followed us.

In preparing for today's meeting I have been reading PAC reports going back over the time of three chairmen of the Revenue Commissioners. The previous three chairmen have attended this committee and have spoken about our special investigations-----