Ms Josephine Feehily:

This concerns the changes to the single European payment area. It has had an impact for us on several levels, business and financial institutions. However, we were alert to it.

We would have alerted the Department of Finance to the fact that there was going to be an impact. In accordance with the SEPA rules, debits from bank accounts are not cleared for seven working days the first time and four working days every time after that. In January a significant amount of tax, €720 million, that under a previous system would have arrived in the Exchequer's account in January did not arrive until early February. We had predicted that the figure would be €750 million, so it was not too bad.

I am a worrier, so I am not sure what will happen in February. February is a short month. The working days fall funny. We are confident that the money due in January arrived in the first five or six days of February. As to whether we will have the same pattern from February into March, I would like to have the first quarter under our belt before I could say there is a pattern. I am also concerned that where new debits hit the system the seven-day rule will apply, for example when we come to October with the self-assessed taxpayers. Many SMEs pay their VAT and payroll taxes much less frequently, three monthly or quarterly, so we still have many cases for whom that seven-day delay has not happened. For all the big payers the seven-day delay is out of the way and the next debit delay will be four days.

If one follows it through, there will be an issue in December. The payment date for taxes in December is 23 December. Forget about seven working days, there are not even four proper banking working days on which we could rely, so we must examine that. It is cashflow, not cash missing, but year on year cashflow causes issues for the Exchequer in terms of Government accounts, etc.