Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Friday, 8 Jun 1984

Vol. 351 No. 5

Estimates for Public Services, 1984. - Vote 8: Office of the Revenue Commissioners.

Minister for Finance (Mr. Dukes)

I move:

That a sum not exceeding £79,305,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1984, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, including certain other services administered by that Office.

Speaking strictly on the Estimate, Deputies will see that the overall situation for 1984 compared with 1983 is that we budgeted for a decrease in money terms of 2 per cent on expenditure for the Office of the Revenue Commissioners. I am not making a great production of that because the main element in bringing about the decrease is the provision for Post Office services which has changed substantially as between the two years, mostly for technical reasons.

There has been a reduction also in 1984 in the provision being made for machinery and equipment for security, printing and staffing. The figure in that regard can change quite a bit from year to year, depending on the requirements. Lest I should get into trouble with the Chair, I do not intend going into a great deal of detail on the activities of the Office of the Revenue Commissioners but I would make the point that the commissioners have a statutory role to discharge and that they discharge that role with impartiality and dispatch. Obviously, it would be wrong of them to operate in any other way. Their task is difficult because there are always pressures on them and quite often a good deal of agitation for them to take a line different from the one they must take in accordance with the legislation. These pressures are often caused by people who, if they appreciated the implications of the line of conduct they proposed, would recoil from it very quickly. The Revenue Commissioners operate on the basis of statutory obligations which we could not allow them to breach and which they would not wish to breach.

Mr. O'Kennedy

How many grades are there in the Office of the Revenue Commissioners? My information is that there are a multiplicity of grades in that Office which are utterly unrelated to the responsibilities the people there have. They are unnecessary having regard to the need to reform the public service and to ensure that the taxpayer gets value for money.

The role of the Revenue Commissioners is all too simple. Claim forms could be issued through a computer and could be checked and verified by people who are trained to do so. There is no need for grades ranging from clerical assistant, junior executive officer, executive officer, inspector, assistant principal and so on. The Minister, together with the Minister for the Public Service, should look closely at the grading structure in the Revenue Commissioners, which is far too cumbersome. Expert advisers on tax revenue will always be needed. Either the Minister does not have them or he is not paying attention to them as regards the shortfall in revenue in various areas.

Mr. Dukes

I am not doing a Ray MacSharry on it.

Mr. O'Kennedy

One of their main functions is to advise the Minister on the likely returns he will get from the tax he imposes. Either he is ignoring those recommendations or else their recommendations, particularly in terms of indirect taxation, have been off target.

Mr. Dukes

We were within 1 per cent of the total last year.

Mr. O'Kennedy

We have clear evidence that there was a fall in consumption of 20 per cent over two years. The Minister and the Revenue Commissioners must recognise that we would get a higher return if we had a lower level of taxation

There are about 30 grades in the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, which demonstrates a growing trend of having a grading structure which must be justified in relation to grade as distinct from responsibility. In the private sector where people have to justify the money that i spent we would not find a maze of grade of this nature. There should be a lowe number of grades. Grades would not be created for the sake of doing so but would be related to what needs to be done. I can be broken down into four basic areas: requests, collection, general administration and advice to the Minister. We do not need a range of grades to deal with that.

Many people think that the Revenu Commissioners are very diligent about collecting money but they are not so diligent when it comes to refunding money. People who apply for rebates to which they are entitled are subjected to long delays before the rebate is paid. It may be that not all the information was furnished, but there must be a better way of organising the affairs of the Revenue Commissioners to ensure that where rebates are due they are paid almost automatically. It may be an administrative matter. The Minister must be aware of this particularly through representations which Deputies make to him or to the Revenue Commissioners.

As regards subcontractors certificates it is impossible for people to get through to the office. Sometimes the phones are engaged all the time. People who depend for their livelihood on the issue of these certificates to ensure that the appropriate tax is levied against them are penalised as regards VAT and so on while they wait for the certificates to be issued. I had representations made to me about this from some constituents. If the experiences which have been brought to my attention are anything to go by, I ask the Minister to ensure that this section of the Revenue Commissioners deal expeditiously with such requests. The delay is, in effect, a penalty on the construction industry and a disincentive for employment.

I do not expect the Minister to have the answers immediately but he should look at the points I have raised. I support what the Minister said about the Department of Finance. When I was Minister, I found the Revenue Commissioners not only diligent but informed and in terms of policy, broadminded and tolerant. I wonder if they had retained that quality. I notice a change in Ministerial decision. I do not know if that represents the Minister's own view, the Government's disposition or a change of mind on behalf of the Revenue Commissioners.

Mr. Dukes

The Deputy cannot make up his mind.

Mr. S. Brennan

How has the public service embargo affected the ability of the Revenue Commissioners to collect tax? Is it having a detrimental effect? How many extra staff have been taken on under the 3:1 embargo? What level of overtime is worked by the Revenue Commissioners? Is it unusual compared to other Departments? One suspects that it is. What progress is being made as regards computerising the work of the Revenue Commissioners and bringing that office into line with the eighties? I suspect that these items, particularly the less speedy than I hoped for computerisation of the work, seriously affect the work of the Revenue Commissioners. It making these criticisms I want to join with Deputy O'Kennedy in complimenting them for the service they have given the State over many years. We as legislators are justly proud of them.

Minister for Finance (Mr. Dukes)

Deputy O'Kennedy asked about the number of grades in the Revenue Commissioners. We have two separate groups, the departmental grades — people specifically employed on the Revenue side, such as inspectors and assistant inspectors of taxes and tax officers — and the general service grades — those who do administrative work and are on the same grading scale as people in the civil service generally. I take the worry expressed by Deputy O'Kennedy that we might not always be confident that the two will mesh properly, but I think Deputy O'Kennedy over-simplified the point when he said we need four groups——

Mr. O'Kennedy

I accept that.

Mr. Dukes

The Deputy will be aware that those four basic functions, or functions similar to them, apply in other Departments. We still have a range of grades from clerical assistants to the secretary of Departments.

Deputy O'Kennedy asked about the proper deployment and the use of staff within the Revenue Commissioners. There is — I hate the use of this word — an on-going discussion between the staff side and the management of the Revenue Commissioners which has produced a number of suggestions for the improvement of the work in Revenue. We have also had another examination and at the moment I am in the process of reflecting how those two studies fit together and examining what prospects they hold out for an improvement in the organisation of the work of the Office of the Revenue Commissioners.

Mr. O'Kennedy

I accept what the Minister says and welcome it, but how many grades are there in the Revenue Commissioners, taking the departmental and general service grades together?

Mr. Dukes

There are ten general service grades, leaving aside the support staff and six or seven departmental grades — I am subject to correction on that, one of them changed their name last year. The number of Departmental grades is smaller than those on the general service side, but this does not necessarily mean that there is great confusion because there are X number of departmental grades and X number of general service grades, because they are parallel.

Deputy O'Kennedy mentioned tax rebates. I fully agree that if it is shown that a taxpayer is entitled to a tax rebate, it is essential that it be repaid as quickly as possible. I would like to see a speeding up the response time to a query, whether it be an under-payment or an over-payment of tax, and I would like to see us shorten the time gap between the emergence of a problem and its solution. In the nature of things, we as Deputies come to see a number of difficulties in these areas but the only cases we see are when things go wrong; we do not see the majority of cases where things are not held up.

Deputy O'Kennedy put his finger on what is a problem throughout the country as regards subcontractors' certificates. It has been my experience in my constituency, and looking at the representation I get from other Deputies, that the most common case is where an applicant for a certificate has not produced the tax records that are required. We occasionally get a quirky situation where somebody who had a certificate for three or four years and has produced the records required during that period finds that a certificate has been taken away because a review of liability going back some years earlier shows he did not keep proper records. That may be a situation we would need to look at, but as Deputies opposite will know, that matter will have to be changed by way of legislation. It cannot necessarily be changed by an administrative change in the operation of the Revenue Commissioners.

Deputy S. Brennan asked how many more staff would be employed in the Revenue Commissioners if we did not have the embargo. I am sorry I cannot give that information off the top of my head. I am aware that there are some areas where the shoe pinches, and it was for that reason last year that we transferred 102 staff from other Departments into Revenue. We took the view that they would be better employed there than if their own Departments. The possibility of that kind of mobility should always be borne in mind. This is very much in keep ing with my own and the Government' feeling that we should deploy our resources to the best advantage.

The level of overtime is worrying from a cost point of view. Deputy S. Brennan will be aware that a concerted effort is going on at the moment to ensure that managements in the various Departments do not allow the total amount of overtime work to keep rising above the level of what is strictly necessary to get the job done. We have a fairly rigorous approach to overtime in the Revenue Commissioners, as there is in every other Department.

In relation to computerisation, this an area in which the Office of the Revenue Commissioners had already made fair amount of progress. It is clear that the computerisation of a greater part of the system would bring about further advantages, and at the moment we are the middle of a review of the overall computerisation programme in the public service generally. Because we have not concluded this review, it would not be proper for me to tell the House exact what is going on. Our concern is ensure, within the limits of what is financially possible, first, that we use this technology in a way which will streamline our administration; secondly, in a way that will give the greatest possible benefit and compatibility between different parts of the public service; and, thirdly, in a way that will enable the interface between the Civil Service and the public to be smoothed out so that relationships will go more smoothly and, as Deputies have said about other areas, that people will be enabled to get their entitlements more quickly and will know more quickly their obligations.

Vote put and agreed to.