Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Over the last number of weeks that I have been in this role, the Revenue Commissioners have not raised the matter with me to date. However, I will be meeting them directly in the coming days and will raise the matter with them to see if there is a cause for concern in the way the Deputy has outlined. As we know, the Revenue Commissioners impartially implement all the laws that we have around taxation. Alongside the Deputy's view regarding that issue, on which I will come back to the Deputy when I raise it with the Revenue Commissioners, let us also acknowledge that we are now at a point at which we have more than 2 million people back at work within our economy. I made the point to the Deputy earlier that if we look at all of the figures that are available from the CSO for 2017, they show an increase in earnings by week and by hour versus where we were a year ago.

It has shown that those increases are broad-based and that if one looks at the 13 sectors in our economy, one will see that earnings per hour have increased in nine of those sectors and earnings per week have increased in 11. It is a matter that I will raise directly with the Revenue Commissioners and if there is a point of concern on it, I will revert to Deputy Boyd Barrett.

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