Ms Cora O'Brien:

There are 4,400 outstanding appeals at this stage. We reckon that it will take approximately ten years, with current resources, to clear what is on hand at the minute. A detailed consultation was published a few weeks ago to which we made a submission. There are 2,000 small businesses and taxpayers with appeals on tax amounts of less than €10,000. In other words, half of all appeals are for less than €10,000. Those people are in the system. Our members have examples of appeals going back ten years that have not yet been heard. There are delays in getting the appeals heard, in getting one's day in front of the appeal commissioner but now we are also finding, with so many appeals in the system, that once the appeal has been heard there are delays of up to 18 months in getting a determination or a decision on that appeal. It is a very expensive process and people in this system who may end up losing their cases are having to pay really high rates of interest, of between 8% and 10%, through no fault of their own because of the appeals process over which they have no control. All of these issues are tied together - long waits on appeals, high interest rates and people struggling to deal with the electronic part of Revenue's service. It all ties in together and needs to be looked at again.