Mr. Niall Cody:

When I read the draft of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report in the first instance and saw a figure of 2% for the audit gap, I wondered was it accurate. If we, as a revenue authority, have managed to get 98% through the self-assessment system, that, to me, is nearly better - I was going to say the random audit programme is perfect and we will take that audit gap of 2%. If it is right, one would suggest that if one applies our risk-based audit programme - in which we collect significantly higher averages and a significantly higher hit rate - to the audit gap, we at least collect half of it every year through our risk-based system.

Looking at the figures, I suppose that if we manage to carry out more risk-based audits, at some stage we might actually collect more through the risk-based programme than the audit gap displays from the random programme. Then we will have managed to collect over 100% of the tax due. I do not know where that will leave us because that is the possibility.