Mr. Barry Lowry:

Yes. Obviously, the process has not been completed, but we think the cost will ultimately run to approximately €500,000 for the Department. The EU has promised it has promised it will make a donation to countries for national costs. The biggest cost will run to the Revenue because it has had a team on since last Friday and it was also involved in the preparation. Revenue staff are working extra hours because they have a huge workload regardless of this need. They will be sending out something approaching 1 million letters and that is before we get into a steady state. That is 1 million letters for next-day delivery and the labour cost of that to the State will be substantial.

This is an EU regulation so as the Minister of State said in his opening remarks, we have no choice but to apply it as efficiently as we can. Where we did not have email addresses for people, we simply had to post the certificates to them.