Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Did the Department, Minister or the Revenue Commissioners take specific advice from the OECD, given that the previous Government worked quite closely with the OECD on these particular changes? Did the OECD have any opinion, or not, as to how effective the changes might be? If it did give an opinion, will the Minister of State make it available? I know this may have been at official rather than ministerial level. Ever since the previous Government took office and since the disaster of the property crash, in terms of tax reputation, Ireland has been increasingly following OECD advice. It is important to know what external advice, if any, was taken on these particular amendments. Whether they are successful will actually depend on what advice was received on them.

In that context, it is certainly apparent that many of the legal and accounting firms, which have an interest in tax planning and management, have given opinions on certain elements of this at various times. Will the Minister of State make available the representations made on a technical basis or by the different institutes and organisations? Advice and suggestions have come from a range of sources. Essentially, they are from people with a strong interest in professional tax planning. Many of them are accountants and quite a lot of them lawyers. There may be others as well.

The amendment is designed to close off an unforeseen loophole. In designing this measure and as a consequence of closing that loophole, has the Minister of State set out a target for tax revenues over the next five to seven years given that it is contingent in certain circumstances on how long properties and assets in some of the funds are held?

The Minister of State referred to 96 funds controlling a significant amount of assets. It would be helpful if he could share with the committee the identities of those funds. All of us would be familiar with different funds, pension funds and so on. It is quite intriguing that the Minister of State referred to 96 particular funds. It may well be that most of them are, to some degree or other, traditional pension funds, many of which have a long association with Ireland. It would be helpful if we knew exactly what we are talking about. Of these funds, how many of them have given rise to the concerns around the avoidance and usage of section 110?

Most of the different kinds of funds that invested in Irish property after the crash have a history of selling on sooner rather than later. In that context, does the Minister of State expect those funds to morph into other funds over the period? In such circumstances, what would be the implications?

The Minister of State referred to a statement by a Minister on rents. Which Minister was he quoting?

I did not hear the name of the person being referenced by the Minister of State.