Ms Josephine Feehily:

This is what I meant when I said I wanted to break it down. That is an important message, because it is not understood by everyone that the level we are discussing would automatically be below the various thresholds. I completely agree with Deputy Fleming that the sensible thing for people to do is to spread the payment over six months, but to do that they must send in their return first. Then we will action their payment option with effect from July and they will have six equal payments, or 26 if it is weekly.

The problem when we come to compliance relates to people who have not made a return. In some ways they will have missed the chance to spread it evenly over six months.

I am faced with a Hobson’s choice. We have discussed this in the Revenue Commissioners. It seems to me that, come July, if we go straight for all the non-compliers in one fell swoop, ranging from people in employment to people on social welfare, then we will be simply ranging too wide. Therefore, we decided to begin with people in employment and then move on to occupational pensions and then write to the people on social welfare and send them a reminder, reminding them in particular of the deferral option. I take Deputy Fleming’s point about the interest, which is in the legislation. It is still likely to be an option that is suitable for quite a few people.

We have decided at this point on a different treatment. When we reach the end of May, if the level of non-engagement from elderly social protection payment pensioners is non-existent, then we will not have to do any of this. This amounts to speculating that we will be dividing the non-compliant into those categories at that stage. However, we need to get to the point at which we can see the make-up of the non-engagers, and then we will dice them into segments and decide on different treatments.