No evidence has emerged that banks encouraged customers to set up bogus non-resident accounts during the 1970s and 1980s, the Revenue Commissioners have said.
In a Dáil reply to Mr John Deasy (Fine Gael), the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, said Revenue officials had interviewed account-holders "on many occasions" about their illegal accounts.
"No evidence has emerged from these meetings to date that financial institutions presented or promoted bogus non-resident accounts to their customers," he declared.
"The Revenue Commissioners will evaluate any evidence made available to them which might indicate that financial institutions presented or promoted bogus non-resident accounts."
A Cork-based group, representing people who have had to make Revenue settlements, has announced it will sue the banks on the ground that customers were encouraged to sign up for illegal products.
Describing the Revenue reply as "extraordinary", Mr Deasy said: "I think people should be penalised for tax evasion, but I don't think it is good enough for the Revenue to say that it cannot pursue bank officials.
"I would be able to produce at a moment's notice a lot of people who would be prepared to say that bank officials influenced them to open up bogus non-resident accounts.
"People weren't able to set up these accounts on their own. They had to be told that they existed. They had to be given help to set them up.
"That help came from the banks," the Waterford TD declared.
Up to now the Revenue has said it was not able to contact account-holders who are prepared to give sworn testimony that bank officials encouraged them to break tax laws.
The civil action taken by the Cork group will be faced with civil standards of proof, while a criminal case would have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
"But the Revenue is going further, it seems to me," said Mr Deasy. "It seems to be saying that nothing has come out of its investigations that would show that banks deliberately organised this."
The chairman of the Revenue, Mr Frank Daly, told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee that bogus account-holders were answerable for their actions regardless of the banks' conduct.
The banks, he said, would have "brought the shutters down" if the Revenue had pursued officials aggressively.
"We had to go about this in a pragmatic way," he told Mr Joe Higgins (Socialist Party).
