Additional powers will be given to the Revenue Commissioners if they are shown to be desirable, the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, told the House. He said that immediately on publication of the McCracken report, his Department had requested the Revenue Commissioners to carry out a review of its powers, in conjunction with the Department of Finance.

If new powers were required and likely to be effective they would be included in the Finance Bill, he said. The last major change in Revenue powers was given effect in the 1992 Finance Act brought in by the present Taoiseach when he was Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy added.

The Minister said he was a long-standing critic of Mr Charles Haughey, having been on one occasion suspended from the Fianna Fail Parliamentary Party for a brief period "for voicing my opinions freely". He had lived with his principles on the back-benches for all of Mr Haughey's reign as leader of the party.

However, he was not now dancing on the grave of his former adversary. "I feel only sadness and regret at the shadow which recent discoveries have cast over so much achievement by a man who for so long dominated this House, and at the devaluation in the public mind of his sustained contribution to the public good."

Responding to opposition criticisms that the proposed terms of reference of the new tribunal are too narrow, Mr McCreevy said the Government's motion equipped the tribunal to investigate specific material which had come to light from the McCracken investigation.

It also enabled the tribunal to determine, where it saw a prima facie case for the investigation of connected matters, to pursue whatever lines of inquiry it thought appropriate.

"Exploratory operations weaken the healthy. We should not embark on them unless some sound diagnosis precedes them," he said.

"The formula which the Government has put before this House and which factors into the terms of reference a stage of preliminary investigation in which the procedure and reporting arrangements will be substantially at the tribunal's discretion, is designed to minimise the danger of damage to individuals or firms from unwarranted public attention."