About £116.5 million has been lying in dormant accounts for 15 years and £7.5 million of that is in unclaimed insurance policies, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) inquiry on DIRT was told.
Mr Colm Breslin, principal officer of the Department of Finance, said that if the dormant period was 20 years or more, the figure would be about £48.5 million.
Mr Jim Mitchell, PAC chairman, said he took it as self-evident that if work was done to find out how much money was there after 10 years or five years, the totals would be substantially greater. This was because as the years went on, money would be claimed or relatives found.
The PAC's recommendation had been that as soon as possible legislation should be prepared so that the resource represented by the funds in dormant accounts might be used by the Exchequer.
The Department of Finance, in a written response, said that consultations with the financial services industry had concluded and the Minister would be reporting back to the Government.
However, the committee was told yesterday that the question of how many years an account was allowed to remain dormant before the Exchequer could take over the money was the main issue to be resolved.
Mr Breslin said that in the light of their discussions with the financial institutions they would be reporting back to the Minister as to what period would be appropriate. He said they had looked into the sums after various newspaper reports indicated there was a vast amount in these accounts. The Irish Insurance Association carried out its own assessment.
They did not know how many insurance policies were involved or whether the other accounts were in post offices or savings accounts.
Mr John Hurley, Secretary General of the Department of Finance, said he did not realise there were any figures. If there were, they would be extremely tentative. Mr Mitchell said: "The committee wants to allow the banks the opportunity of telling us what efforts they've made to track down the owners of these accounts."
He added there was a danger of an underestimation of the amount in dormant accounts as there had been for the DIRT accounts.
The Governor of the Central Bank, Mr Maurice O'Connell, said he had no figures but his information was that the figure reached its peak at 15 or 16 years as a lot of money was put into accounts for children when they were born.