Vol. 533 No. 6
189 Mr. Naughten asked the Minister for Finance the average delay in a deed of transfer application being dealt with by the Stamping Office; the plans he has to resolve this problem; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9602/01]
I am informed by the Revenue Commissioners that deeds of transfer personally presented for over-the-counter stamping at the Dublin and Cork stamp duty offices are processed at the time of presentation, provided the documentation is correct. The Dublin office also provides a five day processing service for personal customers who do not require the immediate processing of their deeds. On average some 6,000 documents are processed weekly either over-the-counter or by the five day service by the Revenue stamp duty offices. This amounts to 80% of all documents stamped by the stamp offices.
The remaining 20% of documents for stamp duty processing are received by post from throughout the country. Arising from the implementation of a new computerised system of stamping an arrears of postal cases awaiting processing developed. At present the time required to process postal cases is in the order of about six to eight weeks. The target period set by Revenue in its business plans for processing postal cases is 20 working days and it expects to be on target by the middle of the year. Priority has been given by Revenue to the elimination of these arrears with additional resources being diverted to the work involved. This has resulted in a significant reduction of the backlog. In addition to the redeployment of resources by Revenue, on 26 January last I announced certain measures, to be included in the Finance Bill, 2001, to remove with immediate effect a range of deeds from a charge to stamp duty. It is anticipated the effect of that will give rise to a significant reduction in the number of deeds that require to be presented to Revenue, thereby, allowing greater staff resources to be available to process deeds that require stamping in a timely manner.
