Mr. Niall Cody:

This goes to the heart of what we are trying to do. Our systems are based on risk so we are constantly evolving our risk analysis system, our risk evaluation analysis and profiling, REAP, system and the various other subsets of REAP. We are trying to identify cases where there are errors, mistakes and evasion so that we target our resources on those cases. It is interesting that our overall numbers are down, as the Deputy rightly says, and the average yield is up, which we find reassuring in that it suggests our targeting is improving. The last time I was here we were talking about the realignment of the organisation and we talked about high wealth individuals. We are trying to realign the organisation to increase the resources dedicated to dealing with larger, more complex and wealthier cases, which take a lot longer to settle and deal with because they are more complicated. Last Friday, there was an article in the Irish Independentreporting on a Tax Appeals Commission determination of a case that was essentially ongoing since 2005. The determination by the Tax Appeals Commission was published on its website. It is 95 pages long. We have spoken before about the Tax Appeals Commission and the information covered in the Tax Appeals Commission determinations involve some of the most positive and important developments in tax administration. It would be positive if people could read and try to understand the complexity of some of the stuff we are dealing with. As we go on, the numbers of interventions will probably continue to go down. We would like to get to a stage, although we never will get there, that the yield would start to go down as well because that would suggest voluntary compliance is correct but I am not naïve enough to think we will ever get to that stage.