Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

Deputy Reilly's amendment has the effect of deleting one of the purposes of the Bill, so I clearly cannot accept it. Amendment No. 53 makes a necessary syntactical change to facilitate the insertion of new definitions into subsection (1) of section 112A of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, and inserts new definitions for "employee" and "employer" into subsection (1) of section 112A of the same Act.

Amendment No. 54 deletes the proposed amendments to subsections (2) and (3) of section 112A of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, as provided for in the Bill as initiated, and inserts a new subsection 2A into that section which ensures that where an employer pays a health insurance premium on behalf of an employee the employee is charged to income tax on the full value of the perquisite - i.e., the gross premium paid by the employer to the authorised insurer plus the age-related tax credit due in respect of the premium and the amount payable by the employer to the Revenue Commissioners in accordance with section 112A(3); that is, the standard-rated tax relief due on the premium.

The amendment also deletes the proposed amendment to subsection (3) of section 112A of the Act as provided for in the Bill as initiated. This refers to a charge to tax on employers that pay health insurance premiums on behalf of their employees, equal to the amount of the age-related tax credit due in respect of premiums paid, and is to deal with benefit-in-kind issues raised by the companies.

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