Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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301. To ask the Minister for Finance the work, if any, that has been conducted in his Department to estimate the revenue that would be earned by collecting an air passenger duty similar to Britain. [31772/25]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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An Air Travel Tax (ATT) applied to departures of passengers on flights from certain Irish airports from 30 March 2009 until 1 April 2014.

Initially, there were two different rates of tax charged, €10 for each passenger flying to an airport more than 300 km from Dublin Airport (long-haul), and €2 per passenger flying to any other airport within 300 km from Dublin airport (short-haul). A flat rate of €3 applied from 1 March 2011, after the EU Commission opened infringement proceedings against Ireland in respect of having a two-rate structure within the EU for the ATT.

The Air Travel Tax (Abolition) Order (S.I.130 of 2014), signed by the Minister of Finance, abolished ATT with effect from 1 April 2014.

As of 1 April 2023, the UK’s Air Passenger Duty has 4 destination bands. There is a domestic band for destinations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland only, and international bands A, B and C for all other destinations. There are three distinct rates of duty for each destination band, depending on the class of travel and seat pitch.

I am informed by Revenue that they do not hold any data in relation to airline ticket sales or flight data. There is no requirement for Revenue to collect this type of information for tax or compliance purposes and therefore they have no basis on which to estimate the revenue that would be raised by the introduction of a levy on the sale of airline tickets into and out of Ireland.

While there has been no formal analysis conducted on the potential yield arising from an air passenger duty similar to that implemented in the UK, the Deputy may wish to note that an EU study published in 2021 assessed the potential impacts of introducing , inter alia, a ticket tax on intra-EEA flights and ticket tax on extra-EEA flights) in which Ireland and other islands were used as case studies. This paper is available at the following address :

Further to this, in October 2022, the ESRI also published a research paper which explores the sectoral, economic, environmental and distributional impacts of several aviation taxation options, including a passenger tax. This paper is available on the ESRI website as set out : .