Results 12,461-12,480 of 34,618 for speaker:Seán Fleming

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: I will pass that over to the secretariat. We want to bring the Department of Education and Skills funded bodies into line as we have done with the HSE. This part of the meeting has taken a long time. As we did not have a full session on correspondence last week, we have had a double session today. We will suspend the sitting until the witnesses are seated.

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: We will be meeting with the Revenue Commissioners in the afternoon. We are joined by Mr. Mark O'Mahony, commissioner and Accounting Officer, from the Tax Appeals Commission. Is this his first appearance here?

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: He is very welcome. We are also joined by Ms Lorna Gallagher, Ms Brenda McVeigh, Mr. Brian Diskin, Mr. Paddy O'Keeffe and Mr. Ray Hogge from the Tax Appeals Commission and Ms Deirdre Donaghy from the Department of Finance. They are all welcome. I remind members, witnesses and people in the Public Gallery to turn off their telephones completely or put them on flight mode. Putting them on...

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: I thank Mr. McCarthy.

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: Before I call Deputy Burke, it is clear that the TAC is not even remotely staffed and resourced to the scale required by the task at hand. I have never seen anything as bad as this at the committee. Some €1.6 billion of taxpayers' money is hanging out there when it should be in the State's coffers. Most of it probably will be once the cases are settled. According to its report,...

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: We are shocked by the scale of the task the commission has been given without the necessary resources to do that job properly.

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: What exactly is a recruitment licence?

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: Has that improved the commission's recruitment time?

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: Say that again for the public.

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: What does that mean?

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: Sorry, this is the 21st century. Go through this again. Mr. O'Mahony had my sympathy before he started but this is getting into farce territory now. It is a serious issue.

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: Does the commission not have personnel to man it?

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: The commission was set up by somebody. This is awful for a new public body. Mr. O'Mahony has my sympathy. In that first year, why did the commission not just recruit some agency staff through some of the big houses? If the commission had a budget of €500,000, why did it not spend it on hiring in? Is it allowed to do that?

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: Will Mr. O'Mahony explain why the commission is not allowed to do that?

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: Not for employment. What about going to some of the big firms like anyone else would to employ somebody on a consultancy basis, if the commission had the budget? Why did the commission not do that?

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: The commission's visit here is long overdue. We should have had it in last September because obviously nobody is listening to the commission, if people are talking about looking at its staff numbers at this stage. I do not say this in a pejorative sense. I am appalled at this money hanging in the system, not being dealt with efficiently. It is bad for Ireland to have such a bad system. I...

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: What is the phrase again? The Tax Appeals Commission is being turned into?

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: We will have a letter to that effect by next week because it is so serious, we cannot wait for a periodic report. We can draw from experience where we have the same situation with social welfare where there is an internal review system, and that probably obviates the need for a number of these appeals to go to the independent Social Welfare Appeals Office. That is written in every letter...

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: How could someone approach an independent statutory body and say that it must exit in two weeks? How did that situation arise? If we had people come to us, as Deputies, saying their landlord had given them two weeks to leave, we would tell him to take a jump.

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 9 - Internal Controls in the Tax Appeals Commission
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (28 Jun 2018)

Seán Fleming: Did the Department of Finance officials know that people were being given two and half weeks' notice to quit?