Mr. Niall Cody:

The idea that we were expecting leaks of information from any institution, it is not that we expect or do not expect but we are very interested when it happens. I was appointed to this job on 1 February 2015 and two weeks later there was the first of these leaks - HSB Swiss - and there were significant documents provided. In March of that year I came into the Committee of Public Accounts at the time to report on our activity in HSB Swiss. It was very interesting in that any of the entities that had an Irish involvement, a significant number we had already dealt with. We had already prosecuted four of the people who have used the HSB Swiss structure for serious tax evasion. We then had the Lux Leaks, the second of the big process in which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, ICIJ, was involved. Then we had the Panama Papers. Each of those sets of leaks we have analysed and we have looked to see if there are cases with an Irish interest. For example, in the context of the Panama Papers we know that there are a number of jurisdictions that paid for the underlying data to whoever got the information from Mossack Fonseca. We were not offered the information which, I think, is probably significant and probably underlines the fact that there is not significant Irish tax evasion. I have to stress the term "tax evasion" because we can only collect tax in accordance with the Irish legislation.

We now have the Paradise Papers. There are 71 entities with an Irish connection. There are 603 addresses and 802 individuals that the ICIJ say are Irish. The information that has been provided publicly is essentially a kind of spreadsheet setting out names and addresses. The underlying data, and the financial data, has not been made publicly available. We have written to The Irish Timesand we have written to the ICIJ asking them, and this is set out. I thought because of the Paradise Papers that it was appropriate that we should send the committee the opening statement that I made last night.