Mr. Niall Cody:

I thank Deputy Cassells for his compliments to Revenue staff. They do a difficult job in difficult circumstances. I will outline the position on debt collection and debt management. A comprehensive review of debt management featured in the Comptroller and Auditor General's 2014 report. We have never had a chance to discuss it but I would be pleased to touch on some of the issues now.

I have up-to-date figures on phased payment arrangements. As of 30 September 2016, the figure is 11,432, covering €108 million of debt. According to the report, we had €734 million of debt that was neither subject to a payment agreement nor enforcement proceedings. In last year's budget package, we got additional resources to focus on debt collection. This tends to be at the lower end, in other words, small rather than medium-sized enterprises. We were having difficulty getting to them. Obviously there are greater numbers of them but smaller amounts of money are involved.