Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 3 December 2015

Public Accounts Committee

2014 Annual Report and Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2014
Chapter 2 - Government Debt
Chapter 3 - Cost of Bank Stabilisation Measures as at the end of 2014
Finance Accounts 2014

10:00 am

Mr. John McCarthy:

Revenue can only deal with the information it gets to hand, that is, the information supplied to it via its large cases division, which interacts, as I say, quite regularly with the multinationals. Consequently, it is subject to the data quality that may come. However, as I stated earlier, there is no obligation on the companies within that division to supply the data and there is no obligation to supply absolutely accurate data. They may simply not know because they may start the year thinking they will have a good year and then, suddenly, the exchange rate goes from $1.30 to parity. Things suddenly get very much better; the world changes.