Mr. Nigel O'Neill:

I wish it was as clearly laid out as that.

When the tolls on the M50 and the Dublin Port Tunnel started, the NRA, National Roads Authority, confirmed at the time that they were exempt from VAT. This went on for several years. In May 2010, Revenue had determined tolls were no longer exempt from VAT and gave us a direction that from July 2010 TII needed to start accounting for VAT. It was open to TII to add VAT to the toll charges. We thought Revenue had got it wrong and we took steps to appeal the determination. It has taken an extraordinarily long time for this appeals process. It was mostly outside of our control and included a reference to the European Court of Justice.

Pursuant to that ruling, the appeals commissioner came to us on 19 January 2017 and at the end of February 2017 Revenue accepted that we should no longer account for VAT on tolls. We had to change our systems so that we could put that into effect from 1 April. The moneys we were remitting to Revenue accounting to VAT on tolls could then be put back into the capital programme and reallocated to safety projects mentioned earlier by Mr. Nolan, which was a positive step. Since then, Revenue has considered its position. We met with Revenue officials in July and they sought backing and supporting information from us, which we provided to them in November. We are now in an iterative process with Revenue whereby it has questions and we are providing materials to it. I do not know what the outcome of that will be. There is an attempt to reach agreement between TII and Revenue. The agreement is not likely to be terribly appealing to either side but there will be an outcome on the refunds to which we say we are entitled and on which Revenue has a view and negotiations will continue in that regard.