Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Revenue must go after and collect taxes where possible, but if a person has no income or assets, it is difficult to collect anything. If these individuals were taken to court, the court would have to take into account their lack of income.

On the social welfare side of the equation, we are dealing primarily with small operators and we advise them to go to their accountants and ask them to do up management accounts for the previous four months if last year's accounts are no good. They will then be able to make a successful claim for jobseeker's allowance based on the management accounts and they can pay Revenue when they can because they will never be able to pay if no income is coming into their house. These people are small operators earning less than €200 a week and all they need is management or profit and loss accounts, not accounts costing thousands of euro, which show the claimants are not earning money.