Ms Josephine Feehily:

There are two parts to the answer to that question. As I said earlier, I do not believe it was possible to draw any conclusions based on the half-year payment. Once this campaign is out of the way, we will have a better pattern. Already, the numbers indicate a drift away from debit card payment to the single debit authority and phased payments. As the amount due has doubled, the pattern this time will be different. That is the first part of the answer.

Second, Revenue has no authority to debit a card a second time. This comes back to the point about retention of card information, which I regard as high risk. Revenue has no authority to debit a card a second time and as such could not simply have rolled over payments as we did in the case of direct debits, which operate within a particular framework.