Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 17 October 2012
230. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Minister for Justice and Equality if he will provide a list of all companies or persons providing an external professional service to his Department such as ICT, legal advice, advertising, project management and including any other external professional service not listed; the amount invoiced by each company to him over the past 12 months, in tabular form. [45335/12]
View answerI wish to refer the Deputy to my reply to PQ 36656/12 of the 19th July 2012, which covered the period to the end of June 2012, wherein I advised that the only manner in which my Department can identify professional services is by reference to the automatic deduction of Professional Withholding Tax. This tax covers a range of professional activities not limited to the examples supplied by the Deputy. The listing sought by the Deputy amounts to 522,015 individual transactions over the 12 month period to 30th September 2012. As previously advised, the sheer volume and scale of information sought would make the provision of a full listing unsuitable for transmission via the PQ system. In the period from the 1st July to 30th September 2012, the period not covered under PQ 36656/12, a total of 1,487 individual firms had withholding tax deducted from payments totalling €13.7m. Of this total, €10.8m is accounted for by payments to legal professionals under the system of criminal legal aid.
