Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is not in being at the moment because the floor of that does not meet the requirement of the pump price for the operator to be paid, so the carbon increase that we were discussing earlier will not be rebated. The effect is to give fuel launderers the opportunity to raise their heads again. Equally, the Revenue Commissioners were handed, virtually on a plate, the ability to detect anybody who may be using laundered fuel by virtue of the fact that people would be signing up for the diesel rebate scheme. Has the Revenue carried out any investigations into the number of operators who were entitled to claim it and those who actually signed up to claim it? Mr. Cody can come back to me on that. Ultimately, what this committee is about is value for money. The objective of that scheme cures one problem while benefiting a sector to stay on the straight and narrow and not give the opportunity to launderers to come back.

I have a minute left to go back to what we discussed earlier. It is, again, about public money and the value that the public gets for how its money is spent. It will probably be a "yes" or "no" answer again. Is it fair to say that the land bridge traffic, as it currently stands, now must operate under the common transit convention, CTC, which causes customs procedures, not only for SMEs but also for Revenue, to be brought into play at minimum unit loads of 150,000? That could turn into multiples of that when it comes to the common transit convention paperwork. Given the cost of administering the CTC and the bond that goes in place, which is basically going to clog up ports with traffic of the EU Single Market either on the land bridge or into the UK, would that money not be better spent from a public money perspective providing shipping infrastructure that allows the Single Market traffic to flow freely without being interfered with by customs? For the small SMEs of this country, it is purported that one customs transaction will take an hour. That is not feasible for many small businesses. Does Mr. Cody advise Government in this capacity and would he be in agreement with that statement? I refer to public money and value for money.