Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Question 48: To ask the Minister for Finance the percentage in 2005, or the latest available figures, of persons who avail of tax relief in respect of pension contributions who are from the lowest decile of income earners; and the percentage which are from the highest decile of income earners. [24833/06]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I am informed by the Revenue Commissioners that the most recent relevant information available is in respect of income tax relief allowed for contributions to "retirement annuity contracts" for the income tax year 2002, which are available to the self-employed and to employees not in occupational pension schemes.

Obviously the capacity to avail of a tax relief depends on one's income and whether one is in the tax net or not, which most low income earners are not. Therefore, it should not be a surprise that on the basis of this Revenue data, some 364, or 0.2%, of the lowest decile of income earners on tax records were able to avail of this relief whereas some 37,000 or 20.3% of the highest decile of income earners used it to provide for pensions.

It is not possible to provide corresponding figures in regard to the take-up of the tax relief for pension contributions by employers and employees as the relevant data are not captured in such a way as to make this possible.

The information on incomes is based on income returns on Revenue records at the time the data were compiled for analytical purposes, representing about 95% of all returns expected.

A married couple who have elected or have been deemed to have elected for joint assessment are counted as one tax unit.