The Revenue Commissioners do not have the powers required to investigate who owned the £30 to £40 million which was contained in the secret "Ansbacher Deposits" discovered by the Dunnes payments to politicians tribunal.
They are also limited in their powers to investigate the finances of the former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey. The payment system set up to defray Mr Haughey's living expenses - involving about £300,000 a year - is still in existence in Dublin, but important documents which would reveal the scale of Mr Haughey's wealth may be beyond the Revenue staff's reach.
Meanwhile, fresh details have begun to emerge about how Mr Haughey took control of Fianna Fail's secret fund-raising committee after he took over as party leader in 1979.
The committee was headed at the time by Senator Des Hanafin, who resisted Mr Haughey's efforts to get possession of the committee's so-called Black Book, the record of the party's business backers and their donations. Mr Haughey eventually fired Senator Hanafin. After calling the other members of the committee to his home in Kinsealy, they agreed to sign a call for his resignation.
An Irish Times investigation has established that in early 1982 when Senator Hanafin's committee wrote to donors on the Black Book list, it was discovered that Mr Haughey's friend and election agent, Mr Pat O'Connor, had already sought donations, unknown to the committee, from people on the list. Committee members were furious.
The Revenue staff have no right of access to books held by private firms which record Mr Haughey's expenditure for at least back to 1988. Nor do they have the power to seize documents which would show the balance over the years in the accounts which held the money used to pay off these expenses. These are the S8 and S9 memorandum accounts mentioned in evidence to the Dunnes payments to politicians tribunal.
The accounts are held by Mr Padraig Collery, a former Guinness & Mahon banker who now works for Kindle Computers, in Baggot Street, Dublin.
Nor do the Revenue staff have right of access to a firm's client records or documents such as those held by Mr Collery, should the client not give his consent that the documents be handed over.
Without a change in the law or the establishment of a new tribunal, which would make public the names linked with the Ansbacher Deposits, the identities of the people who lodged the money in the secretive accounts may never become known to Revenue. However, legal sources said the appointment of a tribunal to investigate the finances of figures not involved in the political or public domain might be challenged on privacy grounds.
The Finance Acts do not give Revenue staff powers which would allow them seize the memorandum accounts, which contain at least some of the names of the Irish residents who hid money in the deposits. The 1983 Finance Act gives the Revenue Commissioners the right to apply to the High Court in cases where they wish to view particular bank accounts belonging to particular named individuals. They need to fulfil a number of criteria if they are to be granted the court order.
As the Revenue Commissioners do not know the names of the individuals who have funds in the Ansbacher Deposits, they can make no such approach to the courts.
The bulk of the money held in the deposits was moved by the depositors, most likely out of the country, in April last after the tribunal revealed that the £1.3 million given by Mr Ben Dunne to Mr Haughey had ended up in accounts in the two banks. Nevertheless, the documents in the possession of Mr Collery reveal the names of at least some of the people who owned these monies, and the balances for some years back. These documents were the subject of an order of discovery from the Dunnes tribunal, but the tribunal is bound by law not to reveal any names discovered.