A member of the Public Accounts Committee has said a serving cabinet minister could be called into the committee to explain why allegations of tax evasion were not acted upon.
Sean Fleming was speaking after the PAC received documents which claim senior politicians used off-shore accounts to evade tax, over several decades.
The documents were considered by members yesterday, after being sent by a current civil servant earlier this week, and will be the subject of a private meeting next week.
The allegations are made against politicians from several parties, as well as one former judge. It's believed that some of the allegations stem from decades past - while others may be more recent.
Deputy Fleming says the dossier was compiled by a civil servant who came across the material in the course of their work.
He said this meant the material was already held on file by a Government department - and suggested that this material would therefore have been available to ministers in that department, who may even have been aware of it.
"It's information that's in the Department today. That means the Minister who's in power today, and the junior minister in that Department today, have right of access to that information," he told Today FM.
He added that the ministers concerned were "probably aware of this issue before it came to us."
Earlier, our political correspondent Gavan Reilly filed this report for the National Lunchtime News:
