Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Okay. I will tell the witnesses what we are talking about in the Committee of Public Accounts which we feel the Department is missing entirely. The first is the amount that is due under the redundancy and insolvency fund. We have heard the Taoiseach - the witnesses need not get into the politics - talking a lot about publishing the names of people caught for social welfare fraud of more than €5,000 while it is €33,000 for taxpayers. There is a lower threshold. We understand the majority of the redundancy and insolvency fund will not be paid. We are satisfied from what we have heard that no one gives a hoot about collecting it in public bodies. It used to be in the Department of Enterprise and Employment, which shipped it over to the Department of Social Protection, which has not done an analysis of how much of it is actually collectible. Some of it has to be collected. Some of it refers to companies that have been restructured and are still there. We have had correspondence from the Department of Social Protection. It says that it writes to Revenue to find out if PAYE numbers are still valid. However, there is no connection. If it related to interest on a deposit account of someone on social welfare, the State would be able to match that up and track that down. However, there is no proper tracking down of it here. I am just saying that there is a gap in the Department's national accounts and it needs to look at it.

I will give a second example. When companies are liquidated, sometimes there is an asset at the end of the liquidation process which, ultimately, if there are no shareholders, is to be transferred to the State. We have not established the Department has a mechanism to do that. The Department got a big receipt the year before last of €10 million. A company in England sent it over to us. We heard about that during a meeting last year. To put it in layman's terms, it is the corporate equivalent of someone dying intestate. I am satisfied that there is no mechanism in place by anyone.

I am just giving three examples that have crossed our desk in the past 12 months. The third example relates to the household charge. Before the local property tax was introduced, there was a €100 per annum charge. If it was not paid, interest was charged. If it was never paid, €7,200 is now due. In the year in question, the Department collected €30 million. The following year, it collected €30 million. Last year, it was a lesser amount. When selling a house, a person has to get an up-to-date certificate from the local authorities and normally has to discharge that charge before the sale can go through. That proves to me that there is money out there to be collected but the Department is doing nothing about it. It is only if someone is selling a house that he or she gets caught at that point. There has to be a mechanism in place. The Department has to talk to the people who are over collecting the money. This is not just the Revenue Commissioners. The Department collects money separate from them. The Department needs to talk to those people about having a mechanism to compare those houses which have come into the local property tax net, which I think is nearly 100%, with those that should have had a liability for the household charge. There is tens of millions of euro out there that zero effort is being made by the State to collect. It collects some of it by default when someone tries to sell a house. Some of that is contingent income which I think the Department does not take into account.

How much is in the rainy day fund? I think it was established last year.