Five former finance ministers will be questioned today by the DIRT inquiry's legal team. The ministers, including the present Taoiseach and two former taoisigh, will give evidence to the committee in order of their term in office during the 12 years of the inquiry's remit up to 1998.
The chairman, Mr Jim Mitchell, had announced that to ensure against any party political bias, the inquiry's three senior counsel, Mr Frank Clarke, Ms Mary Irvine and Mr Paul Gilligan, would question the ministers - three Fianna Fail, one Fine Gael and one Labour - rather than the inquiry's six TDs.
The committee members will attend the hearing, however, and Mr Mitchell will continue to chair the inquiry. They could suggest questions to the legal team but not during the questioning, and they could not limit the questioning.
The committee wants to establish whether there were any "formal or informal intimations made" by politicians in relation to the application of the law.
The inquiry has dealt with the genesis of SIM 263 - the internal Revenue instruction which prevented tax officials from examining declaration forms for non-resident deposit accounts.
Yesterday, the chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, Mr Dermot Quigley, said in the searches he had undertaken and in his contact with former and current officials, "I have absolutely no indication or evidence that there was any political involvement in the insertion" of the reference in SIM 263 preventing examination of non-resident declaration forms.
He said they had not in their latest round of searches "located any file dealing with the drafting, compilation and issue of SIM 263".
Mr Quigley believed "in all probability" that a tax official, Mr Frank Cassells, now deceased, drafted SIM 263.
