Taxpayers should not have to pay for inquiry, says Hogan

The Irish taxpayer should not have to fund the €3 million Ansbacher investigation, the Fine Gael spokesman on enterprise, trade and employment, Mr Phil Hogan, told the Dáil.

It should be paid for by Guinness & Mahon and CRH, the two companies without whose involvement the scheme would never have got off the ground, he said.

"Both companies have a moral and ethical obligation to pay the costs of this investigation."

He was "nauseated" to see CRH "trumpeting the fact" it was spending €394 million on "development initiatives", during the first half of 2002. "They had nothing to say about putting their hands in their pockets properly" to cover the cost of the Ansbacher inquiry.

The single most alarming finding of the Ansbacher report was the fact that a former taoiseach who had publicly espoused financial probity and presented himself as a man of the people, had led a Walter Mitty existence.

Mr Charles Haughey had presided over Cabinet meetings at which tax increases were imposed, health cuts were applied and the vote for the Revenue Commissioners and the Central Bank discussed. Yet, despite the revelations about the Haughey era, no one seemed shocked or surprised any more. If the report was to achieve anything there must be no more double standards. People identified in the report as likely to have committed criminal offences, should be charged and brought before the courts.

The Garda should arrest them and if appropriate, charge them.

"We should expect the same type of treatment for those individuals as the small businessmen of the 1970s and 1980s, faced with demands for VAT etc on the due date and the prospects of visits from the VAT inspectors and sheriffs,"Mr Hogan said.

Reading the report, he was reminded there was a whole category of people who had been forgotten "in this sorry saga", the true victims, who paid their taxes. Ordinary people worked hard to earn a highly taxed salary while "the elite" worked hard to avoid paying taxes. And business people faced with enormous financial pressures, faced unscrupulous competitors with access to hidden offshore funds.

Capital expenditure was cut - for new schools, infrastructure, hospitals and roads - ensuring a legacy of decades of neglect.

The results of the investigation removed any doubt about self-regulation for the "auditing and accountancy profession" in Ireland, he said. "I hope the Tánaiste will have the bottle to tackle this powerful vested interest."

He also criticised the Central Bank's role, which was "more concerned with prudential concerns than with the effective and ethical regulation of the banking sector". The report had highlighted "an unquestioning" Central Bank - prepared to be spun a line and to take a more charitable interpretation of the law, if convenient, by people such as Mr Des Traynor.

The Fine Gael finance spokesman, Mr Richard Bruton, said the report revealed a criminal conspiracy to defraud the compliant taxpayer. It was designed for the benefit of the privileged and was a conspiracy to which the regulators had turned a blind eye. It was time to challenge preconceptions about best practice among regulatory professionals, he said.

For example, what justification was there for the protection of confidentiality given by the Central Bank to financial institutions it was regulating, which allowed tax evasion to go unchallenged? And why should auditors be allowed to compromise their independence by selling tax advice to businesses they were auditing?