People in glasshouses don't throw stones. The Ansbacher names may bericher and more famous than most, but there are plenty of others who aren'ton the list and have questions to answer, writes Paul Cullen
There'll be wigs on the green tomorrow when the list of names of the Ansbacher account-holders is finally published.
Five long years after the existence of the accounts first hit the headlines, the identities of 200 individuals and companies linked to the offshore bank are due finally to be revealed before lunchtime.
Their unmasking will undoubtedly be accompanied by much gnashing of teeth.
There'll be righteous indignation, generous amounts of outrage and more than a touch of blood-lust. And then we'll probably all just get on with it.
At this stage of the lengthy investigations by tribunals and appointed officers, the public's capacity for genuine anger seems spent. The ritualistic responses are still there, and there will undoubtedly be immense curiosity about the names that emerge from the report.
However, the passage of time and the complexity of the various investigations has vented the rage that once existed.
Many of the names on the Ansbacher list will be long familiar, having been leaked or exposed at an earlier stage of investigations. Others will have dropped out of public life, and some will have died.
It's unlikely that anyone aged under 50 today ever held an Ansbacher account; the accountant and banker who managed the accounts, Des Traynor, died over eight years ago.
But there is another reason why public indignation is likely to be short-lived: tens of thousands of respected citizens can ill-afford to throw stones from their glasshouses. The inquiries of recent years have established that large numbers of people were engaged in tax evasion and avoidance, offshore accounts and a variety of other subterfuges designed to ensure they paid as little tax as possible.
The standard excuse for this behaviour is to explain that tax rates were high at the time, and the threshold for paying tax was low.
But if more people had been paying tax, would the rates have been so high? And what about PAYE workers who had never had the option of hiding money from the taxman? Of 300,000 non-resident accounts that existed in the 1980s and 1990s, 50,000 were bogus. In spite of repeated calls by the Revenue Commissioners for account-holders to come forward, by last October only 300 had done so voluntarily.
By now, that number has crept up to 4,000, and they have yielded €227 million in extra tax revenue. Yet the Revenue believes money is due on thousands of other accounts.
The former chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee, Mr Jim Mitchell, believes the total amount due could be as high as €2 billion.
The two tax amnesties offered during the 1990s showed that thousands of people had money salted away in dubious circumstances. But on top of this, the Revenue Commissioners now say a good number of taxpayers availed of these amnesties and still didn't declare bogus non-resident accounts.
Taxation patterns also beg a few questions. In 1999, for example, just 17,000 self-employed declared incomes of over £35,000 (€44,450).
Yet there are 12,000 accountants (not all of them self-employed), 5,000 doctors, 1,300 vets, 1,000 dentists, 10,000 publicans and 20,000 big farmers. At this level of stated income, you'd wonder why more of them don't look for proper jobs.
Meanwhile, only 40,000 out of 115,000 farmers paid tax - any tax - last year. They contributed 1.1 per cent of the total tax take, or an average of just €1,173 each.
The behaviour of some of our politicians is well documented, and gives little cause for comfort. Beverley Cooper Flynn had no problem advising customers when she worked at National Irish Bank to lodge money offshore.
Her fellow Fianna Fáil TD, Denis Foley, sat on the DIRT tax inquiry without declaring that he had an Ansbacher account. Michael Lowry engaged in massive tax evasion while chairman of Fine Gael and a government minister. And Liam Lawlor sat on the Dáil ethics committee until he resigned after spending his first week in jail.
With examples like these, is it any wonder if the public reaction to Ansbacher turns out to be more short-lived than might be expected?
The money held by Des Traynor for his clients travelled further and higher than many a nest-egg squirreled away by lesser mortals, but the funds were all going in the same direction - out of the country and away from the taxman.
The lack of genuine outrage at tax evasion is reflected in the courts. Since 1996, there have been 16 prosecutions for serious tax fraud. Compare this to the figure of 50,000 bogus non-resident accounts.
For the first time, people are being jailed for tax offences, and three evaders are currently in prison. By comparison, nine people were jailed for social welfare fraud in 2000. The Revenue Commissioners are already doubtful they can secure prosecutions of tax-dodgers with Ansbacher accounts.
The message is clear: enjoy the "naming and shaming" now because it might be the only tangible result of this process.
And keep your head down if you have any skeletons in your own cupboard.
Paul Cullen is an Irish Times journalist who has reported on the Flood Tribunal for five years