Mr. Damian Duggan:

Alan Shatter was the Minister for Justice and Equality at the time. Two other representatives and I met his departmental officials and gave them a list of ten items which we recommended for implementation, the first of which was the cheques for gold proposal. They thought it was wonderful. However, we did not receive any feedback after the meeting.

We recently tried to contact the Revenue Commissioners. We have been sending it emails for seven months regarding an idea of ours relating to things being smuggled into the country. It responded to say that a certain person would phone us within the week regarding VAT on imports. If one buys a high-value item anywhere in the world and wishes to have it insured in Ireland, Irish insurance companies will insist on it being valued here. We recommended the imposition of a charge similar to the vehicle registration tax, VRT, whereby one must register one's car when one brings it across the Border, on jewellery, paintings and other high-value items, which would entitle the importer to a registration certificate for the item. If one wished to sell the item, one would have to produce the certificate stating that the duty had been paid, and it could not be insured unless the duty had been paid. That is a very simple way of addressing this issue which would bring in a lot of revenue for the Exchequer. We have sent numerous emails to Revenue but have not heard back from it. If I owed it VAT, I would hear from it very quickly. It is quite disheartening.