So you're a foreigner and you've got, say, a few hundred thousand pounds whose existence you would prefer was not revealed to the revenue authorities - or perhaps the police - in your own country.

Welcome to Ireland. For a mere £1,500 start-up cost and about £1,300 per annum after that you can have your problem solved, courtesy of an Irish Registered Non-Resident company (IRNR).

You approach a company formation specialist in Ireland or in any country and fill in your company application form. The information required here is limited to the company name, its business, the names of the directors and shareholders.

But, if you don't fancy putting your own name down as a director, don't worry: the company formation specialist is aware that you may have a difficulty. He or she can provide nominee directors and a correspondence address, and will also deal with your annual returns.

"The beauty of it is that it doesn't appear to be offshore," one offshore company specialist said yesterday.

"The Isle of Man, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and so on are blacklisted. Any transactions your company has with these places will be automatically regarded as suspicious by your revenue authorities and probably investigated.

"Transactions with an Irish-registered company, however, are unlikely to arouse a second thought."

Since the UK stopped allowing this practice, the saleability of IRNRs has flourished. "They're flogged by offshore practitioners throughout the world," said the offshore specialist. "I used to sell them in Hong Kong, now I sell them in the Isle of Man. Indeed as I speak I'm doing one for a Tanzanian gentleman."

It is impossible to ascertain how many of the estimated 40,000 IRNRs are legitimate and how many are to facilitate tax evasion or even the laundering of criminal proceeds.

To establish an IRNR you must satisfy three conditions:

The company is beneficially owned by non-Irish residents.

It is managed and controlled from outside Ireland.

It does not undertake business in Ireland.

But to launder money you need more than a company, you need a bank account. IRNRs formed by company formation services in, say, the Isle of Man or the Cayman Islands will generally have bank accounts in those jurisdictions. The account can be held anywhere.

Any police, revenue or regulatory authority coming across this account will see that it is owned by an Irish-registered company, a company in an eminently respectable jurisdiction. Money can then be transferred into and out of this account without raising eyebrows.

Major multinationals, in contrast, have spent £1 million or more in connection with setting up Irish Registered Non-Resident companies.

This has been spent on taxation and legal advice in several countries in order to set up a complex accounting structure designed to minimise the multinational's tax bill.

It is all a perfectly legal way of organising one's international business affairs. Between 10 and 20 US multinationals have decided to set up the legal base for their worldwide operations in Ireland.

In certain circumstances US multinationals can take advantage of the complex US "tax deferral" system through establishing their legal base in Ireland. To do this they must establish an IRNR.

"Most US multinationals operate through Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and places like that," said an IDA spokesman. "This allows them to operate through Ireland."

There is no benefit to the Irish economy from this, save the substantial fees paid to accountancy and legal firms to set up these arrangements. Nor would multinationals actually manufacturing in Ireland pull out if these IRNRs were abolished.

The IDA spokesman agrees that there would be no closures of multinational operations in Ireland in the event of the abolition of the accounts. "We won't lose them. They won't disappear. It's more the embarrassment and the damage to Ireland's credibility," he said.

Having been advised they could set up this structure, the multinationals would then find that they could not do it any more and might have to pay out a further £1 million in legal and accountancy fees to establish an alternative structure. The offshore practitioner agrees that the company specialists are unlikely to lose out for some time.

"When the British closed them all down in 1989 the practitioners made huge money from winding up the companies and setting up alternative arrangements. The same would happen in Ireland."