Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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25. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will ensure that weekly local property tax reductions from payments are synchronised with those payments to avoid extra weeks deductions being made at the year's end. [1041/15]

Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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56. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the reason three weeks local property tax was deducted from her Department's payments before Christmas. [1039/15]

Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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57. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the week in 2015 that her Department will be reversing the extra local property tax debit and putting through a credit for social welfare recipients deducted an extra week before the year end. [1042/15]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 25, 56 and 57 together.

Due to a technical error, a deduction in respect of Local Property Tax (LPT) for the 2015 year was taken earlier than planned resulting in some customers having additional LPT deductions taken from their double payment week before Christmas. Customers who had requested the deduction at source towards LPT had two deductions in respect of 2014 which were correctly applied to their double week payment. For some customers, however, an additional deduction towards their 2015 LPT liability was incorrectly applied.

I regret the inconvenience caused to customers in this regard. Those customers affected will have one less LPT deduction applied to their welfare payment in 2015 and my Department is working with the Revenue Commissioners to implement this as soon as possible.

My Department is reviewing this issue in conjunction with the Revenue Commissioners as part of ongoing dialogue to ensure that the deduction at source payment option operates as smoothly as possible.