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

I thank Deputy Richmond. The total amount of staff that the Revenue Commissioners will now have, upon the implementation of the proposed Estimate, is 7,024, which is an increase on the number at the end of last year when the total was just under 6,680. I believe the total number of staff the Revenue Commissioners will now have will be sufficient to allow them to respond to the many challenges of Brexit. They have done an excellent job on our behalf. If I look at what that work is now primarily focused on, it involves custom-related roles deployed across many different sites, but ports, airports and mail centres are particularly important at the moment. It is certainly the case that the Chairman of the Revenue Commissioners and his team can make decisions to reallocate staff, if they so wish, from some parts of the organisation to deal with Brexit-related policy matters. They have already done that, and that influenced decisions they made in 2020, where they needed slightly fewer staff than we would have anticipated because of reallocation decisions that were made.

In terms of the impact that this is having on the revenue of the Revenue Commissioners, we are seeing some very early signs of trade flows being affected. At this point, we have an appropriations-in-aid estimate of €59.5 million for the Revenue Commissioners, which would be a decrease on last year. We are seeing it having an impact on the revenue of the Revenue Commissioners, as the kind of work staff are performing, and the quantity of trade are also beginning to change.