Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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229. To ask the Minister for Finance his views on the fact that the Revenue Commissioners state they will process Med 1 applications submitted online in five days, but that applications submitted via post will take 20 days to process, which puts persons without Internet access,or those who are not computer literate, at a major disadvantage; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10090/17]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I am advised by Revenue that they are committed to processing all paper health expenses claims (Med 1 form) within 20 working days. This is set out in their Customer Service Standards published on their website.

Taxpayers are, however, encouraged to self manage their tax affairs using the suite of online facilities provided by Revenue. This includes the submission of health expenses claims using the online facilities as the quickest, most secure and most efficient way to get a refund of tax to which the taxpayer may be entitled.  It is possible to provide a quicker service for taxpayers using the online services as it involves, in many cases, a fully automated processing service requiring no intervention by a Revenue official.  Paper forms, on the other hand, need to be dealt with by a Revenue official and therefore take longer to process.

I am aware that Revenue has made and continues to make a significant investment in, and improvements to, their online service offering, to make it even easier for taxpayers to do their business online.  They are now designing their systems to ensure that taxpayers with limited computer knowledge can use their systems.

Revenue fully appreciates, however, that not all taxpayers will be able to, or wish to, conduct their business online and it continues to process paper based transactions from such taxpayers, albeit that the processing time will be longer than for online transactions.