Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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151. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of Revenue Commissioners staff, by grade, currently answering telephone calls on the Personal PAYE hotline. [20156/24]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Revenue has advised me that it currently has a total of 330 Clerical Officers (COs) and 91 Executive Officers (EOs) providing the full range of PAYE services. Of those officers, approximately 190 COs are on phone duties with the remainder working on correspondence received online or via the postal system. The EOs are allocated to support the phones and correspondence in a similar proportion, as well as provide a management function.

Revenue has further advised that it allocates resources to best meet the demand of the various services required and that the current arrangement whereby the phone service is available from 9:30am to 1:30pm each day provides the optimum allocation of available resources to deal with the volume of submissions through post and online as well as through the phone service.

As the Deputy may be aware, the early months of each year place the highest demand on Revenue’s PAYE Services as taxpayers submit their income tax returns for the previous year, claim any refunds or reliefs to which they may be entitled, and check their tax credits for the current year. Revenue has indicated that, between January and April of this year, the PAYE Helpline staff have answered over 265,000 calls and processed over 500,000 items of correspondence received through its online services or the postal system.