Revenue gamekeepers turn poachers for banks

Quite why the Revenue should be surprised that none of the banks was forthcoming on the subject of DIRT is something of a mystery.

After all it was the Revenue itself, or one of its senior officers, which penned the infamous SIM 263 which instructed staff not to check the documentation relating to non-resident accounts - the only practicable way to unearth bogus accounts.

Not only that, the Revenue then saw people who had been former colleagues moving into new jobs with the very banks, whose non-resident accounts it was being instructed not to check.