Keeping your bearings when following the Dail Committee of Public Accounts inquiry into DIRT is tricky.

Look at it this way. From the evidence so far, it appears the government introduced a tax on deposit interest in 1986 - one which was deeply unpopular with the public at the time, as I recall. This was a tax which was not favoured by the Department of Finance and was seen as unworkable by both it and the Revenue Commissioners. The Central Bank, which by its own admission had no role in it, was to be kept informed of any plans to try to enforce it and the politicians who introduced it are accused of pressuring all and sundry to ignore it.

The only thing anyone seems clear about is that the whole fiasco was someone else's fault. If DIRT was such an unloved child, how come it was introduced in the first place?