Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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90. To ask the Minister for Finance the revenue that would be raised by increasing the Revenue Commissioners personnel by 125 qualified persons to target tax evasion and black market activity. [13883/16]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I am advised by the Office of the Revenue Commissioners that Revenue's Comprehensive Review of Expenditure 2014 estimated that by increasing audit staffing resources by c. 100 staff an additional exchequer yield of €50 million per annum could be achieved. It estimated that by increasing staff on compliance projects such as oils, tobacco and alcohol by 100 could raise €20 million per annum. It also estimated that increasing staffing on investigations by 20 staff could achieve exchequer savings of €12 million per annum.

In that context Budget 2015 and Budget 2016 provided for an increase of 176 (126 and 50) in additional resources to deal with a wide variety of staffing requirements across audit and compliance functions, debt management functions, international tax, etc.

Revenue appointed over 400 staff from open competitions in 2015, these staff were mainly deployed on Local Property Tax support, International Tax and on compliance interventions. Revenue has appointed over 230 staff to date in 2016 from open recruitment.  The recruitment in 2015 and to date in 2016 has been at all levels and across a diverse range of specialist skills areas such as tax and legal professionals, data analysts, economists and information technology experts.

It should be noted that the recruitment of staff and their training and development is addressed as part of an overall workforce planning process in Revenue. The investment in the training and development of a Revenue auditor or investigator can take up to three years, depending on previous relevant experience.  The capacity to recruit and develop Revenue staff needs to be addressed in a coordinated fashion.