Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

IFSRA, the Revenue Commissioners and the Director of Corporate Enforcement have separate inquiries under way. Will the Taoiseach assure the House and the public that information will be shared between these three distinct and separate inquiries?

IFSRA is under no obligation to make it findings public, the Revenue Commissioners will not do so and the Director of Corporate Enforcement is likely to confine himself to breaches of company law. Does the Taoiseach accept that the public will not accept a situation where some secret settlements are entered into in a matter as grave as this?

I point to the record on this. Since DIRT was a self-assessment tax, the bank was legally complicit in evasion but the Government took no action to cause it to be prosecuted. It made a monetary settlement and there was no prosecution. Will the recommendation of the Committee of Public Accounts, that "the Government consider the imposition of a levy on the financial institutions the proceeds of which to go towards the funding of the Foundation for Investing in Communities", now be implemented? Does the Taoiseach think it appropriate that there should be a surcharge?

People do not believe they are equal before the law. The window cleaner who had a part-time job and was drawing social welfare is screwed to the ground until he pays back the social welfare, even if he is only employed on a part-time basis. That does not apply here. One of the reasons it does not apply is that many years after €700 million was recouped by the DIRT inquiry, when George Lee and Charlie Bird broke the NIB story, the Minister for Finance said:

The sums uncovered are very small in the context of the level of tax paid each year, so I think you need to put it in context. It is an insult to the vast majority of tax payers to say that tax evasion is widespread.... So these things should be borne in mind, rather than people going off half-cocked and making ridiculous and outlandish allegations, both against the Revenue Commissions and against other people as well.

That was the culture and the Minister for Finance was easy with it. There was no prosecution of the bank when it was legally complicit in the evasion of DIRT, but if a window cleaner works in the black economy, he is nailed to the back of the door until he repays the money secured in social welfare.

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