The chairman of the Revenue Commissioners yesterday expressed dissatisfaction with the sentencing of serious tax offenders by the courts. Colm Keena reports.

Mr Frank Daly told the Dáil Committee of Public Accounts that sentencing was a matter for the courts, but expressed reservations about two particular sentences.

He also said the Revenue had tried to prosecute banks or financial advisers for "aiding and abetting" tax evasion but had been told by the Director of Public Prosecutions that they didn't have a case.

Mr Daly said "you are quite right", after Mr Joe Higgins TD, Socialist Party, said it was "clear that, if you are a big banker, you can steal with impunity from the taxpayer" but that if you are an ordinary person you will go to prison for stealing a few hundred euro.

Mr Daly said the Revenue could only bring cases to court and sentencing was a matter for the judiciary.

There had been a case where an individual who had to make a €1.6 million settlement with the Revenue had been fined €1,750 on conviction. He made no secret, he said, of his view that "something else would have been better".

He also referred to a recent case where a man convicted of tax evasion was sentenced to community service.

"Maybe that is not an appropriate sentence, given what tax evasion does to society... but it is a matter for the courts."

He told Mr Dan Boyle TD, Green Party, that in a recent case involving the former assistant Dublin city and county manager, Mr George Redmond, the court had said it could not ignore the financial penalties imposed by the Revenue.

Mr Daly told the committee that of 12 cases where people had received sentences of imprisonment for serious tax offences in the period since 1995, all but two had their sentences suspended.

Mr Higgins said the €1.6 billion raised from the Revenue's special inquires was an "astonishing figure ... What have you done in relation to those who organised this at the highest levels in the banks, this theft from the taxpayer?"

Mr Daly said he did not know if evasion had been organised at the highest level in banks. He had to go on the facts and what he knew.

When Mr John Curran TD, Fianna Fáil, said the tax evasion now being exposed could not have been organised without the tax evaders' receiving help, Mr Daly said there was a "real difficulty" in securing convictions for "aiding and abetting" tax evasion.

The legislation focused on aiding and abetting a person in knowingly making a false return, as against "the act of putting money offshore". The Revenue had sent files to the DPP in relation to the institutions and financial advisers, but had been told it did not have a case.

The Revenue was now going to recommend a change to the law that would make securing a conviction more feasible, but the new law, if enacted, would not, of course, be retrospective.