Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)
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Question 91: To ask the Minister for Finance the reason no random audits were carried out on the Revenue Commissioners during 2004; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26623/05]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I am informed by the Revenue Commissioners that the matter of random audits, including the purpose and methodology, has been the subject of discussion at the Committee of Public Accounts committee following examination of this issue by the Comptroller and Auditor General. As a consequence, in December 2003, the Revenue Commissioners gave a commitment to the Committee of Public Accounts that they would undertake a review of their random audit programme with a view to improving the methodology so that it would be possible over time to extrapolate figures regarding underlying tax compliance from the audit results. Pending this review the traditional random audit programme was not continued for the year 2004 although some cases selected in earlier years were concluded.

The promised review was carried out in late 2003 and during 2004 and following that a new random audit programme called the tax compliance testing programme was rolled out in November 2004. This programme is currently in use and, for 2005, on the basis of purely random case selection, is being used to test tax compliance.

I am satisfied that the Revenue Commissioners are pursuing a programme which is dealing in a very determined way with tax evasion by maximising the impact of their resources through focusing on risk. This is strengthened by their new tax compliance testing programme, which ensures that all of our taxpayers will be exposed to the possibility of a compliance check or Revenue audit. This approach is in line with international best practice.