Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I was not sure which Department it was.

I refer to replies to two parliamentary questions that I received from the Department last month concerning outstanding debts for the various schemes. This is relevant to our earlier discussion on write-offs. I asked for details on the outstanding customer debts. I only asked for the large figures, over €10,000, by scheme area at the end of August 2019. I asked for the number of cases where payment plans were in place and the number of cases where no repayment plan was in place. According to the schedule in the reply, there are 5,638 cases where a repayment plan is in place and the value of the debt for which the repayment plan is in place is €156 million, and no repayment plans are in place for 6,075 cases and the figure is €171 million. In those cases, for all the schemes, the majority have no payment plan in place.

I then sought details on the outstanding customer debts with a value outstanding of, again, over €10,000. I did not want to a lot of paper so I just kept to that limit, and asked for an age analysis. According to the chart, in terms of repaying and not repaying, the figure adds up to €327,000. They are the same figures with these now broken down by an age analysis rather than scheme. The first half of the reply was by scheme and the latter half was by aged analysis. The Department has a case from 1984, where a person owes €119,000 and the person is repaying, and two cases of debts, totalling €28,000, where there is no repayment plan in place, going back to 1984.

I estimate that between 1984 and 1989 the Department is owned €1.5 million by 100 people. That is a long time owed. Between 1990 and 1999 there is €16 million owed in respect of approximately 600 cases. Between 2000 and 2009, there is approximately 1,900 cases amounting to €77 million. How do those figures tally with what Mr. McKeon told us about the pre-2010 payments that were written off?