SEANAD REPORT:A PROPOSAL for a tax amnesty was worth looking at, Seanad leader Donie Cassidy said.

He was commenting on a call by Feargal Quinn (Ind) that consideration be given to the introduction of an amnesty, despite the outcry that would result.

Acknowledging that the Minister would be very brave to take such a step, Mr Quinn said a tax amnesty in Italy had been so successful that its time limit was being extended.

“They have already taken in €80 billion and they estimate that there is as much as €500 billion in untaxed assets.

He could understand that such a move here would be very unpopular, because it would suggest that those who had cheated on tax in the past were now availing of something that they did not deserve.

“But, on the other hand, we have an economic situation here which could very clearly benefit from the sort of income that we might receive, as we did on the last occasion.”

Paschal Donohoe (FG) said material he was reading concerning the last tax amnesty in Ireland had convinced him that the exercise should not be repeated here. “If you look at what’s happening in Italy at the moment, I’d be pretty confident in predicting that the tax yields after this tax amnesty will come down because people will feel confident that another one will happen in the near future.” There was a need to avoid such an outcome here.

Mr Cassidy said that as a person who had been responsible for the employment of huge numbers of people, Mr Quinn had the credentials to make such a suggestion. Previous amnesties here had been enormously successful.

When it was so tough at present to collect revenue, everything should be looked at. He would inform the Minister for Finance of what Mr Quinn had advocated.

While as a nation we were assisting the people of Haiti for all the best reasons, we were depriving special needs children without any outcry from the media or anyone else, Joe O’Toole (Ind) said.

Fine Gael justice spokesman Eugene Regan said the Minister for Justice’s response to the Garda Inspectorate report about resources was totally simplistic.