The chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Mr Michael Noonan, has said he believes there could be another institutional tax evasion scandal after his committee received confidential information about the sale of insurance products as a tax evasion mechanism.
Addressing a conference of senior civil servants in Dublin yesterday, Mr Noonan said he planned to ask the Revenue Commissioners to investigate the sale of insurance products in the late 1980s and early 1990s by a certain Irish financial institution.
The information is that the policies were sold to enable individuals to recycle undeclared income by investing it in a type of insurance product, which provided a lump sum after a specific period of time.
The products provided a very low return at the time, compared to the deposit interest rate, which was in double digits for much of the period.
Mr Noonan said the information the committee had received related to "insurance policies where an enormous amount of black economy money seems to have been turned into white economy money.
"The Revenue Commissioners are before PAC next Thursday and I intend speaking to the chairman, Mr Frank Daly. I want to ask him is he aware of it, and whether he will extend the current investigations to cover it."
Mr Noonan made his comments during a conference for civil servants on financial management and accountability in the public sector, organised by Public Affairs Ireland.
He said the PAC Dirt investigation had led to the commissioners recouping over €600 million in taxes and penalties, and helped prompt a change of approach towards institutional tax evasion within the commissioners.
Mr Noonan, who was appointed to the chair of the PAC last month, said he wanted to see the work of PAC leading to recommendations from the committee which would lead to changes in practice, "rather than being a hurler on the ditch commenting on the actions of civil servants".
Meanwhile, the vice chairman of PAC, Fianna Fáil TD, Mr John McGuinness, criticised what he said was "a lack of resources" made available to the committee.
He also said that the political scandals of recent years had seen politicians transfer powers and decision-making to politically unaccountable "quangos".
"There are enough public bodies to fill Glasnevin and enough boards to make the coffins."
He said his experience in PAC led him to believe many of these bodies were "indecisive and inefficient".He believed there needed to be a wholesale reform of the public sector to make it more efficient and accountable.
"The problem is that we have to spend more money on overhauling the public service to bring it to the best institutional private sector standards." He said his comments were not an attack on the public service. "It's an attack on the system," he said.