Bank board `did utmost' to ensure compliance with tax regulations

Mr Dan McGing denied that branches of ACC bank had a "very loose attitude" to Government legislation and taxation law.

The chairman of the State-owned bank from 1987 to 1996 said there was a "sloppiness" in the maintenance of DIRT-liable accounts "rather than a deliberate attempt to thwart people".

He was responding to Mr Bernard Durkan TD, who asked to what degree "the alarm bells sounded" for the ACC board concerning disregard for the law and DIRT-liable accounts.

Mr Durkan referred to the Comptroller & Auditor General's report on DIRT, which stated that some branches came up in internal reports "on a regular basis". He asserted it could not have been taken seriously because the irregularities "kept recurring".

Mr McGing said a lot of the breaches in the bank were "technical, where something wasn't dated or it was a declaration which covered a number of accounts".

No member of the board of ACC bank was prepared to tolerate any non-compliance with DIRT or any other regulations, he insisted.

The C&AG's report outlined a case in Tallaght in 1993 where a non-resident account was found to be held by a member of head office staff. Mr Durkan said here was a head office official "disregarding the law completely".

In another case a sterling deposit account in Tuam in 1995 was held by a staff member but coded as non-resident and no declaration was in place. "That again would appear to be a rather peculiar activity, given that there was no culture of disregard for the law in relation to DIRT tax," Mr Durkan said.

Mr McGing said: "What I was saying is that there was no culture from board or management or indeed from the staff". All the cases were revealed by internal audit. "So it was part of our own efforts to try and keep things right that discovered these."

He defended the bank saying: "Unfortunately, at times, the best efforts of the board and management to ensure compliance with all regulations were not 100 per cent successful".

Compliance "had a very high priority with the board" and management who "were seen to make strenuous efforts in order to ensure compliance with current legislation in general and DIRT legislation in particular".

Outlining the bank's difficulties, he said that in 1987 the Agricultural Credit Corporation, as it then was, would have been "technically insolvent" were it not for Government guarantees. All eight members of the board were appointed by the minister for finance. There was a huge responsibility to "ensure we got back to profitability".

He told Mr Denis Foley TD: "From the board's point of view we did our utmost to ensure compliance." The DIRT problem was never seen as an "absolutely major problem". There was never a case of turning "a blind eye" to DIRT but it "may not have had the top priority that getting the corporation back into a profitable state had".