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privilege of his client. That privilege was built up for
good reasons over many years.
If someone commits murder and consults with a
solicitor and discloses what he has done on the course
of his consultation with his solicitor, I assume the
Minister does not believe that the solicitor should there
and then report the matter to the Garda. The position
in this regard has been built up over centuries with
the experience of what can happen. The proposition
that a solicitor who receives information in the course
of his professional duties is obliged to hand over that
information to the authorities is a most dangerous pro-
position.
This is the thin end of the wedge. Without this sec-
tion the information sought could not be obtained by
the Revenue Commissioners. The Minister seeks to
justify it on the grounds that we are all against aiding
tax avoidance. We are all against a great many other
things too and yet the privilege of a client who consults
his solicitor is preserved in law, and is jealously pre-
served.
This section is taking away rights which exist in regard
to the relationship of a client to his solicitor. It is taking
them away and whittling them down. It will be ex-
tended further if this is allowed to go on. The Minister
may talk about the position in Britain. The Minister
is devising a formula here for the hothouse growth of
such kinds of activities in this country. He is driving
people into that position. That is precisely what will
happen. He will get no information of any value what-
ever from this section. He will create a situation in
which people will not go to their solicitor, or their
accountant, or their bank, and the Revenue Commis-
sioners will know far less about what is going on than
they do at the moment. They will be far less effective
in getting after such people. It will go totally under-
ground with a number of undesirable consequences
flowing from it.
The Minister should know of some of the things that
have happened in Britain as a result of this kind of
legislation. He will have to reconcile himself to the fact
that, in this perennial battle between those who are
trying to avoid liability for tax and the Revenue Com-
missioners, there are no final victories. It goes on and
on. If the Minister pushes the situation too far, as I
believe he is doing here, he is so altering the ground
rules that these people are getting out from under the
ken of the Revenue Commissioners. If it is not pushed
too far the Revenue Commissioners can at least become
aware of what is happening and close the loophole.
People will open further loopholes, but that is getting
more and more difficult. When you try to get informa-
tion which is of no use to the Revenue Commissioners
anyway by undermining the relationship between a
client and a solicitor, as is being done here, all you are
doing is driving the whole thing completely out of the
ken of the Revenue Commissioners. You are losing out
on a number of scores, and what have you got to show
for it? A section which says the names and addresses
of people involved in those transactions are to be given
to the Revenue Commissioners by the solicitors con-
cerned. Is this rational? Is this a real approach to this
matter?
Is the Minister seriously suggesting that this section
will aid in any way the efforts of the Revenue Com-
missioners to get at people who have indulged in tax
avoidance? Does the Minister not know that these pro-
visions are totally ineffective in so far as they relate to
people who do not want to be caught? He must know
that from his own experience and, if he does not, then
if he consults with some of his former professional col-
leagues, they will tell him very quickly what is happen-
ing. This is totally ineffective but there is a price
being paid for this ineffective result, a price which
could be very high in the future. The price relates to
the privilege of a client who consults his solicitor—a
privilege which has been preserved over centuries for
very good reasons—and if that position is eroded the
rights of citizens under the criminal law as well as
under the civil law will disappear. To say that it is an
exaggeration, may appear to be plausible, but the Min-
ister must know that this section is taking away existing
rights and if this is allowed to go unchallenged then it
will only be a matter of time until it is carried further.
If the justification for taking away these rights can be
the duty of everybody to assist in preventing tax avoid-
ance, are there not very many other far more compel-
ling reasons which can be put forward from the point
of view of civic duty, far more compelling than that,
which would justify further erosion of this position?
I would ask the Minister not to take this step on
this slippery slope and not to try to justify it by talking
about an obligation to assist in combating tax avoid-
ance because I can give him ten times more compelling
reasons for taking away far more rights and we will
then end up with no rights at all. A very dangerous
precedent is involved in this section. It is one which
has been resisted by many solicitors. It is not being
resisted by them because they have any privileges. They
have no privilege—it is their clients have the privilege—
but they know better than anybody else what this kind
of step can lead to in the long run. I repeat that the
value of this step to the Revenue Commissioners is
minimal but the implications of taking it and attempt-
ing to justify it are enormous. I do not want it to
happen that this House would allow a section like this
to pass without clearly enunciating the dangers involved
and resisting this encroachment and the implications
of the encroachment.
Mr. R. Ryan: I do not share the high moral dis-
position some people have in regard to differentiating
between evasion and avoidance. Many forms of avoid-
ance are no more than operations by the clever to avail
of weaknesses in administration or imperfections in the
language of the statute to frustrate the clear intention
of the Legislature to collect tax arising out of certain
profits or capital possessions. I do not think Deputy
Colley would deny that. If I am wrong in that conten-
tion, why is it that one Finance Minister after another
year after year used the Finance Bill to stop avoidance
practices? Avoidance is not a transgression of the law
but not infrequently it is a brutal bending of the law.
It conforms with the law because it slips in between
the dot above the "i" and the 'T' itself. Many of the
practices of avoidance by means of transferring assets
abroad are such as to run so close to evasion as to he
properly termed evasion. Indeed, since the 1974 Act
obliges people to pay tax on income earned from assets