Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Do the Minister of State's officials have a view on how much income has been lost to Revenue through these aggressive forms of tax planning?

During the past year or more, a great deal of information has emanated about people with deposit accounts in Switzerland in particular that have been used to avoid tax. In well publicised cases, whistleblowers there have identified people from various jurisdictions who have been salting money away from the prying eyes of tax collectors. I would not be surprised if some of those people were from Ireland.

In the interests of ensuring aggressive tax planning does not occur, perhaps the Minister of State could inform the House about the situation pertaining to people with non-resident deposits in tax havens like Switzerland and Austria where banking regulations are extraordinarily secretive. For example, we know from The FitzPatrick Tapes of a strange transaction involving Anglo Irish Bank, which took the Taoiseach out golfing and so on at various intervals prior to the State's guarantee of the bank. He was telephoned in Singapore and attended a dinner hosted by Anglo Irish Bank in Heritage House just before he became Taoiseach. In July 2008 before the bank guarantee there was the famous round of golf and dinner afterwards with various Anglo notables. It has always intrigued me that the purpose of these contacts made by Mr. FitzPatrick was, presumably, to plead with the Taoiseach that the bank needed deposits from the National Treasury Management Agency. At or around the time of the guarantee, this bank had a subsidiary in Austria where banking secrecy is extreme. Lo and behold, shortly after the guarantee, this bank which desperately needed deposits, sold the Austrian subsidiary with about €600 million in deposits. What has always intrigued me is how did a bank, which was begging for deposits, sell a subsidiary bank with deposits of €600 million. Was this connected to tax avoidance transactions?

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