Even if they pay their £25 to buy the document, few will want to plough through the 361 pages of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report on DIRT tax, never mind the appendices.
To get a quick flavour, readers could turn to just two passages. On page 81, the report details a 1991-92 investigation by the Revenue Commissioners into bogus non-resident accounts at the Bank of Ireland in Milltown Malbay, Co Clare, an investigation which raised £2 million but was not followed up with a general sweep of accounts.
On page 62, the Central Bank governor Maurice O'Connell tells it as it is in explaining why, despite everyone knowing about bogus accounts, no one in the official system ever did much about it.
First, to Milltown Malbay. A range of traders in the town made voluntary disclosures about shielding money from tax in the Bank of Ireland accounts. Revenue officials expressed "alarm" that bank officials had colluded in hiding funds. Eventually, nine cases were identified, a DIRT settlement of £200,000 was paid, and tax underpayments of £1.8 million were collected from the errant taxpayers.
It was good work by the Revenue investigation section, raising such a large sum from just one branch, but the Revenue did not take the logical next step and follow up with Bank of Ireland on the issue of non-resident accounts in general, nor seek assurances that all accounts were properly certified. This lack of follow-up, the C&AG dryly notes, "is difficult to comprehend".
It is a story which pops up again and again in the report. In fairness to Bank of Ireland, it appears to have made genuine efforts to get its act together in the early 1990s, and the problem of non-resident accounts appears to have festered longer in AIB as well as in the State-owned ACC and in National Irish Bank.
However, the story of a lack of a clear attempt by the Revenue to clean up bogus non-resident accounts persists, until it finally moved into the institutions in earnest last year.
Why? The report contains many reasons - one might say excuses - why the Revenue, the Department of Finance and the Central Bank all sat back as hundreds of millions of pounds was hidden from the tax authorities.
Let's remember, after all, as Milltown Malbay illustrates, that we are not just talking about DIRT tax here but the much more substantial issue of hiding money from income tax.
After uncovering the AIB non-resident accounts, the Revenue officials moved on to other issues, one saying he was busy with a big investigation into the drinks industry. Revenue officials also cited other reasons, including their lack of powers, lack of resources and they pointed to the fact that it was the banks' business to monitor their compliance.
What of the other arms of the State? The Central Bank, when asked by the Department of Finance in the mid-1980s to examine whether the opening of bogus non-resident accounts represented a widespread abuse of exchange control rules, came up with a list of reasons why it would not investigate: its powers were not appropriate; the limited extent of an inquiry would be seen as trying to "bolt the stable door"; and any inspections would identify the bank as responsible for financial outflows and generally undermine confidence.
Department of Finance officials, meanwhile, were positively obsessed with not causing an outflow of funds from the economy which could undermine the currency and push up interest rates. It was a repeat of a warning in 1991 when, in beautiful prose, officials advised that "overall, it would probably be more prudent to await developments before any action is taken on non-resident accounts."
The page of testimony from Maurice O'Connell sums up how it was in the 1980s. The Department - where he worked at the time - and the Central Bank were "broadly aware of the fact the people were avoiding tax". Everyone agreed it was wrong, but the attitude was, "For God's sake, whatever you do, don't rock the boat." The boat being the exchange rate.
Government officials estimated that up to £1 billion could be hidden in bogus non-resident accounts, but they never sought the evidence which would have compelled their financial masters to do something about it. Instead, the evaders were rewarded through two tax amnesties. Given the warnings from officials on the extent of bogus accounts, the second amnesty in 1993 was a clear decision by the Reynolds government that was bound to allow many off the hook.
The C&AG's report is another chapter in the tale of Ireland in the late 1980s and into the early 1990s. We already knew about money hidden in National Irish Bank accounts and about the wealthy few who had funds hidden in the Ansbacher accounts.
Now we see that hiding money was endemic at the time; the Revenue is now trying to collect DIRT money due since 1986 and - in the NIB and Ansbacher cases - may pursue the depositors, but it will never go next or near collecting all the money due from the thousands who hid money in such accounts, and in most cases it will not even try. The months ahead will help to tell whether things have really changed. The C&AG's report contains a disturbing analysis showing that 27 per cent of the UK addresses given on a sample of non-resident declaration forms did not appear genuine. Evidence, it seems, that there is still a way to go to clear up the problem.
Ironically, on the day the C&AG's report came out the Revenue Commissioners' annual report was published. The Revenue is now widening its policy of pursuing serious tax evaders to seek criminal prosecutions. If a few tax-evaders go to jail, then it would signal that a new era really has arrived.