The Dail Public Accounts Committee is to use, for the first time, its powers to compel witnesses to attend its meetings to give evidence in response to a major report from the Comptroller & Auditor General on the collection of DIRT tax.
The report, due to be published today, will raise substantial issues on which the committee will want to question representatives of the Revenue Commissioners, the Central Bank and a number of the major financial institutions.
The C&AG, Mr John Purcell, was called in by the committee to examine the whole area of Deposit Interest Retention Tax payments and bogus non-resident accounts in the wake of controversy over such accounts held in AIB in the late 1980s.
Interest will focus on whether the report shows that this was, as AIB claimed, an industry-wide practice at the time.
AIB and the Revenue Commissioners disagreed fundamentally on discussions they had on these accounts in 1991.
As well as looking at this conflict, the C&AG's team, assisted by auditors from London, examined practices in relation to DIRT in 37 financial institutions in the State and also questioned officials from the Revenue Commissioners, the Department of Finance and the Central Bank on their policing of the system. The investigation also had access to extensive documentation from all sides.
The C&AG is understood to have completed a detailed report of over 500 pages which is likely to raise substantial issues for the Revenue Commissioners and the Central Bank in terms of their policing of the system.
Witnesses from AIB and a number of other financial institutions are also expected to be called before the committee and questioned in detail.
The report is to be presented to a special sub-committee of the PAC, chaired by Mr Jim Mitchell TD, tomorrow and published at the same time. The sub-committee will meet in public session on Thursday, July 29th, to set out procedures by which interested parties can be represented.
This meeting will also decide which witnesses should be compelled to attend before it.
The committee is also set to use powers to compel the disclosure of documents, some of which will have already been examined by the C&AG. Its first full hearing will be held at the end of August.
The C&AG can only report on evidence; his report will not draw any conclusions. It will then be up to the PAC sub-committee to reach findings and make recommendations on the basis of the report and what it hears from witnesses.
The terms of reference of the C&AG's report were to examine the Revenue Commissioners' role in overseeing the collection of DIRT, look at how the financial institutions acted in their role as collectors of the tax and whether any shortfalls of the tax occurred. His team also looked at what information was known to the institutions, the Revenue, the Department of Finance and the Central Bank in relation to bogus non-resident accounts.
