Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will address a number of points raised by the Deputy. As I announced in my budget speech, a revised bank levy is being introduced for 2024 that will be payable by banks that received State assistance during the global financial crisis. The banks concerned are AIB, Bank of Ireland, EBS and Permanent TSB. It will replace the current bank levy, which is based on a percentage of the deposit interest retention tax paid by the banks in a specified year and is due to expire on 31 December 2023.

The revised levy will be provided for by a new section 126AB of the Stamp Duties Consolidation Act 1999. It will be applied in the form of a stamp duty at a rate of 0.112% of the total amount of deposits held by the banks on 31 December 2022 to the extent that those deposits are "eligible deposits" within the meaning of the European Union (Deposit Guarantee Schemes) Regulations 2015. The target yield for the levy for 2024 is €200 million.

The original policy intent of the bank levy was to ensure that banks that received State funding in support following the financial crisis made a contribution to the economic recovery of the country. In line with this policy, the revised form of the bank levy is proposed to again be placed specifically on those institutions that received State support and are still providing retail banking services in the State.

I considered the possibility of extending the bank levy to other regulated entities, including the non-bank sector, but it did not prove possible to determine an appropriate legislatively robust way to distinguish between the various forms of such entities. I intend to give this matter further consideration across 2024.

On the amount of the levy that we intend to collect, for 2022 and 2023 the bank levy was targeted to raise €87 million per annum from 2022 to 2023. The revised target yield of €200 million per annum represents considerably more than twice what was raised in each of the previous two years, and one third more than the €150 million which was the revenue target each year between 2014 and 2021. As such, I do not consider €200 million to be an insufficient target yield for 2024.