There are times in this House when one is anxious to speak but having listened to Deputy Gregory I feel a bit of a cad for interrupting him. I was very interested in his speech and I hope he continues it on some other occasion because I agreed with every single word.
Newspaper reports, which appear to be true, are suggesting that the principals of a Dublin PR agency paid £1 million in penalties, arrears and interest to the Revenue Commissioners in respect of payments received by them through a Panamanian shipping company and banked by them overseas. These newspaper reports have naturally caused a great deal of public concern. Many people want to know exactly why there appears to be a discretion by means of which some taxpayers are personally held up to public judgment and obloquy in respect of their tax default while others are afforded the privacy of the veil of incorporation in respect of similar acts of tax default.
I ask the Minister to explain in detail to the public whether the Revenue Commissioners exercised discretion in failing to name the principals involved, whether there are any guidelines by reference to which such discretionary decisions are made and whether the Minister can give an assurance to this House that in similar circumstances a similar decision will not be made again in the future. It would appear that there must have been a substantial personal liability to taxation involved in the circumstances published in the newspaper. Surely, it cannot have been a question of liability to corporation tax alone. If personal liabilities existed at the back of or in conjunction with the Panamanian company's tax liability, the public are entitled to know on what basis corporate rather than personal penalties were imposed.
We operate in a system where there is virtually complete Revenue confidentiality and, therefore, I appreciate that the exact circumstances of the tax liability and penalties are unlikely to be revealed to this House and I am not asking that they should. However, we know that someone, somewhere, with inside knowledge was so angered by the circumstances that he or she blew the whistle. Without engaging in moral condemnation of any of the people involved, because we do not know the full facts, I believe the Government has a duty to tell the ordinary, compliant taxpayer just how the decision to publish the penalties under an obscure corporate name was arrived at and whether, in similar circumstances, a similar decision will be made in the future.
Another issue which arises is the effect of the utterly arbitrary and indefensible tax amnesty legislation of 1993. If the transactions which are the subject matter of this debate had been the subject of the tax amnesty, we would never have heard of the transaction and the amount recovered by the Revenue Commissioners would have been less than £100,000, that is, a 90 per cent gain to the taxpayers. Finally, the ordinary tax inspectorate would have been kept in the dark about the modus operandi of the tax default.
My purpose in raising this issue is not to make holier than thou pronouncements about the Revenue activities of others but to uphold the rights and dignity of ordinary compliant taxpayers and to be assured that tax compliance is not a virtue confined to the weak, the unimaginative or those who lack appropriate connections. The ordinary men and women who pay their taxes, pay heavy interest, borrow and mortgage their homes to comply with their Revenue obligations and have to produce tax compliance certificates simply to survive in the business world find it impossible to understand how those who break every rule can not only avoid any serious consequences in some cases but actually avoid the public embarrassment of hard questions being asked about them.
I have repeatedly raised with the appropriate authorities the failure of the State to prosecute or disqualify from holding company office the small handful of persons identified in the Hamilton report as having been responsible for the largest tax fraud ever perpetrated on the Irish Exchequer. The relevant amount was £10 million and involved were what Mr. Justice Hamilton termed the "top management" of the Goodman companies. To date I have had no adequate explanation as to why real accountability in the form of civil and criminal responsibility was not established on that occasion.
On a number of occasions juries have refused to convict people of serious offences because they regard the real perpetrators and real beneficiaries of certain tax offences and other frauds as going unpunished. I ask the Minister to indicate to the House whether there was a discretion involved in the decision to fail to mention the persons involved as opposed to the company, whether there are any guidelines by reference to which such discretionary decisions are made and whether the Minister can give this House and compliant taxpayers an assurance that a similar decision will not be made in similar circumstances in the future.
