Mr. David Delaney:

That situation relates to one provider. We have looked into it in detail. It relates to a time in the hospitality industry when there was lack of clarity, when moving from Covid-19 to the Ukraine crisis, in terms of the appropriate VAT for emergency accommodation. We had an external expert brought in to check this for us. The advice we received was that the provider in question had acted in a very prudent manner in erring on the side of caution in charging VAT, which is ultimately money that we collected for the State in the circumstance. There were meetings between the Irish Hotels Federation and the Department of Finance, and between the Department of Finance and the European Commission, to clarify this, in a general sense, for the federation. When the clarity was ultimately sought, the provider approached Revenue to do a self-correction. That self-correction was worked through between the provider and the Revenue Commissioners because, ultimately, VAT is between the provider and the Revenue Commissioners. The final settlement was that the Department was owed the money that was paid back with the remainder-----