Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If we are going to do that, I might touch on some key elements rather than going through the entire statement, which was distributed to members yesterday and which, I am sure, they have read.

Members will be aware that the Department of Finance is divided into two broad areas, namely, the economic and fiscal directorate and the finance and banking directorate. The opening statement gives an explanatory note of the work done by both, so I will not speak to that. However, I wish to highlight the appointment of Brexit co-ordinators at principal officer level across all divisions of the Department.

I will refer to the key figures in the Finance group of Votes for 2019. There is an increase of €23 million or 5.7%. The primary driver of this increase is the provision of a €21.7 million increase for the Office of the Revenue Commissioners relating to increasing staff numbers and other costs relating to staff, almost all of which is to deal with the coming challenge of Brexit.

The gross allocation sought for the Department of Finance Vote in 2019 is €41.1 million, of which some €10.5 million is provided for a fuel grant scheme for disabled drivers.

The allocation for Vote 8, the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, is applied towards a single programme. The Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General is completely independent of the Department. Its Vote in 2019 is €8.657 million to allow it to deal with the 290 sets of accounts produced by public bodies.

I will speak in more detail on the Office of the Revenue Commissioners. Its work is always instrumental. In 2018, Revenue collected a record €54.6 billion for the Exchequer. Its audit and compliance section yielded €573 million, which in turn yielded 17 different criminal convictions and led to the publication of 754 cases published on the tax defaulters list. For 2019, Revenue requested a budget allocation of €378.58 million, an increase of 6% on the 2018 net Estimate. Nearly three quarters of the budget relates to payroll for an increased employment ceiling of 6,384 staff. It is worth putting in context a figure about which the committee has asked me on many occasions. We are hiring an additional 600 staff, which is nearly a 10% increase on the total number of people working for Revenue. This is driven by their needs in dealing with Brexit. Additional funds are required to develop Revenue’s ICT systems. This will be done by the deadline to which I referred.

Finally, Vote 10 relates to the Tax Appeals Commission, TAC. It will receive an increase of €1.582 million, or 97.3% on the 2018 estimate. The committee will be familiar with the reasons behind that. The TAC is recruiting 33 more staff in order to allow it to deal with the number of cases with which it must deal. On Tuesday morning, the Government agreed to significant legislative change in relation to appointing a chairman of that body and other necessary data and processing changes which I will bring before the committee very soon.