Two weeks ago I raised in this House the matter of the predatory behaviour by our banks with regard to tracker mortgages. As I said at the time, most of the bank robbers are now deep in the boardrooms and not on the streets as used to be the case. I believe it was important to speak on the issue, because episodes like the tracker mortgage scandal reveal where the real centres of power lie in the State. The position is that there is no law for the bankers and the rich and another law for the rest of us. That has only been compounded by the revelations contained in the so-called Paradise Papers. Unprecedented levels of tax evasion or aggressive tax avoidance have been uncovered.

Prior to the American Civil War the rallying cry was, "No taxation without representation". That was a very noble aspiration. It is a principle that has now been completely reversed, especially in this country. It is clear that all of those who pay little or no taxation, including bankers, have all of the representation. They have access to, and control the levers of power and have rights that the ordinary working person could not dream of.

During the 2016 debate in this House on the Panama Papers, the then Finance Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, said he was bringing forward legislation to enable tax defaulters to make a qualifying disclosure to Revenue. He was very good. The Minister went on to say that defaulters who have used offshore accounts or assets in their evasion will "find themselves in a very difficult position if they do not come forward quickly to regularise their affairs with Revenue". Could the Taoiseach tell me how many of those people have come forward? I did not see any queues outside the Department of Finance but perhaps the Taoiseach knows the figures. I suggest that not many came forward. Institutional tax avoidance still appears to be rampant in the State.

AIB held an EGM last Friday. Will the Taoiseach indicate whether the Minister for Finance was present at the meeting? If not, he should have been, given that we have more than a 90% stake in the bank. Colm Keena reported in The Irish Times on Monday details about AIB. He referred to leaked files from the Isle of Man offices of the offshore law firm Appleby. The files reveal Government-owned AIB refused to give the Revenue Commissioners access to data on its offshore customers when responding to a court order in 2015. The bank refused to obey the courts of this land.

For most people on the outside listening to this today, and indeed for most of us here, the ins and outs of the international tax system are a complete labyrinth. It is deliberately designed so that ordinary people cannot understand it. What is not hard to understand however is the sense that such episodes reveal a large gaping hole at the heart of our democracy. The massive double standard that operates in this arena rightly infuriates people. In the meantime the Taoiseach makes great play about acting the tough guy with respect to social welfare fraud. He said they should be named and shamed. Unless I missed it, I did not see the Taoiseach outside the headquarters of AIB or Bank of Ireland with placards and hashtags saying that bankers should be named and shamed and that they should be outed. It is a case of one law for the rich.

The Taoiseach knew all about the banking scandal in 2011 when he was on the finance committee. He was told by Friends of Banking Ireland and other organisations yet the merry-go-round continues. I want to know if the Taoiseach attended the EGM and what it was all about.

I have never been a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance. I do not know if the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, was present at the EGM but I do not believe he was.

With regard to the Paradise Papers, there are 13 million documents and I do not think anyone has had a chance to read all 13 million yet so I imagine the story is still very much evolving. Tax avoidance is very much an international problem. We know that when one country closes a loophole people seeking to avoid tax move on to the next country so what is required is an international solution to what is very much an international problem. The OECD is the international body that deals with this issue. It has defined Ireland as one of 22 countries that has a clean bill of health when it comes to tax transparency. In addition, we have agreed to enter into information sharing, whereby for the first time the Revenue Commissioners will share with their counterparts in other countries how much tax companies have paid. That is an important step forward so that revenue authorities in different countries will be able to share that information.

In terms of the Revenue Commissioners, they have said they will examine the Paradise Papers. They will take further action if required, whether it is against individuals or companies, and in addition to that they have informed me that they have collected €1 billion already from targeting offshore operations.

The Taoiseach did not provide me with any information about the former Minister, Deputy Noonan, and how people went to Revenue to disclose their offshore dealings. Before he gets carried away with the OECD saying how good we are with tax compliance, the dogs in the street know what is going on. They also know what is going on in the banks because ordinary families have been terrorised and robbed. I hope you do not get too annoyed with my choice of language, a Cheann Comhairle. The bank robbers are deeply entrenched among the policy makers in the banks. As I said two or three weeks ago, the Government just hopes this storm will go away and it will ride it out and nothing meaningful will happen to those people who are milking us dry day in and day out, and taking the lifeblood of the ordinary people. We do not have any legislation to deal with the big boys and we are playing catch-up all the time.

The Taoiseach referred to so many million pages in the Paradise Papers. The Government gets some cover from that. It is a lovely name for them. It is all confusion. However, ordinary people are no longer confused. They know the Government and the previous one had no will to tackle the bankers, tax avoiders and defaulters. I know there is a difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion but I am talking about big business and the fact that there is no law for them while the rest of us are all subject to the rule of law. That is not acceptable. Even if the Taoiseach was not a member of the finance committee he was well aware of the carry-on of the banks as it was brought to his attention nine years ago. He claims to only know about this in recent days but that is a cop-out.

The Deputy is quite correct that there is a difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. Tax evasion is a crime and tax avoidance has a wide spectrum ranging from tax incentives set up by the Government, which we encourage people and businesses to avail of, to the other extreme which is people using aggressive tax planning to exploit loopholes in the law - loopholes which the Government is closing.

Examples include getting rid of the double Irish, eliminating stateless corporations and, in the Finance Bill now going through these Houses, changes in the way that we tax international property.

I note Allied Irish Banks issued a statement yesterday indicating that it was decided to wind down the relevant companies in 2012. This Government was not in office in 2012. The party I lead only came to office in 2011, so within a year of us coming to office, AIB decided to wind down those companies. AIB also confirmed that the relevant entity ceased operations by 31 December 2013. I note from the statement that at all times the bank claims it complied fully within the law in any jurisdiction in which it operated.

Ultimately, of course, tax matters are matters for the Revenue Commissioners. I have total confidence that any issues of concern will be investigated by the Revenue Commissioners, as appropriate. I call on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to share any information with the Revenue so that we can take action.

Did the Minister attend the bank's extraordinary general meeting?

To the best of my knowledge, "No". I do not know, but I do not think so.