Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

While I support the Government amendment, I welcome this important Labour Party motion. I do not necessarily agree with the thrust of every recommendation it makes but this is a matter well worth airing. I would like to pick up on a point made by Senator Higgins. I strongly believe that the Ombudsman's recommendations should be observed and carried out by the Revenue Commissioners or any other public authority. If there is a lack of legal power to ensure they do so, annual legislation should take care of it.

I welcome the success and progress in recent years in tackling tax evasion. It has been a factor in the significant revenue buoyancy we have enjoyed. In a little more than a decade, revenue has tripled, due mainly to economic growth, higher employment and broadening of the tax bands. Also, there is more compliance with tax laws than was previously the case. One cannot measure the success of the Revenue Commissioners by the number of people it catches. One must consider those it deters, something we cannot measure. Increased revenue, as we all know, helps to fund services and to reduce the weight of the tax burden born heavily by a limited number of people, in the PAYE sector in particular.

I welcome the more rigorous, without fear or favour, approach taken by the Revenue Commissioners. We have to take note in this discussion of the statement by the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, in the Dáil yesterday in reply to a question on refocusing the establishment of an investigations and prosecutions division:

If in the course of investigations amnesty offences are identified and the necessary evidence is available they will be investigated with a view to taking a criminal prosecution for such offences.

In addition to the Revenue Commissioners, there is the Criminal Assets Bureau but I accept this operates in a different context.

I understand that the Revenue Commissioners adopt a certain pragmatism. The objective is to maximise revenue. They not only collect from the non-compliant but they also encourage compliance by others. It costs €85,000 per year to imprison somebody. Generally speaking, tax offenders are in a different category from other offenders in that they have a large amount of income and assets.