Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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75. To ask the Minister for Finance if a temporary wage subsidy scheme application by a person (details supplied) will be re-examined due to an error. [13624/20]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) is a fully automated solution that is dependent on timely payroll data being provided by employers to Revenue through the real-time PAYE reporting system in accordance with legislative obligations. The system specifically requires that eligible employees were on the employer payroll on 29 February 2020 and that the employer reported the February payroll to Revenue before 15 March 2020. The 15 March 2020 deadline was recently extended to ‘before’ 1 April 2020 by Revenue under its care and management provisions. Where an employer fails to meet these statutory reporting obligations within the required timelines, it is not possible for the TWSS system to generate any subsidy payment.

Revenue has advised me that the difficulties encountered by the company in question in accessing the TWSS arose because it failed to file its February payroll submission until after the extended concessionary deadline (‘before’ 1 April 2020). Revenue further advised me that the company also failed to file payroll submissions on time on a number of occasions since the real-time PAYE system commenced operations on 1 January 2019. The late filing of the February payroll submission prevented the TWSS system from calculating any subsidy on behalf of the company’s only employee and it is not possible for Revenue to design a technical solution that could provide access in circumstances where an employer has not adhered to the statutory requirements.