Abtran paid €3.6m for property tax calls

Finance Minister Michael Noonan has confirmed that Cork-based firm Abtran was last year paid €3.58m inclusive of Vat for providing telephone call handling for the local property tax and household charge.

However, Abtran wasn’t the biggest winner last year from the Revenue Commissioners’ payout to third parties, with its pay to An Post totalling €6.32m or — on average — €121,538 per week.

The figures show that Revenue’s largest payout was made to Accenture, which received €15.1m in relation to providing IT resources.

Mr Noonan said Abtran began service on March 7 last year, and has to date handled in excess of one million calls.

He added: “The helpline service, which is provided in both the English and Irish languages, normally operates on a 9am-5pm Monday to Friday cycle, but during peak filing periods is extended to an 8am-8pm cycle and can include Saturday when required.

“A key aspect of the service is the provider’s capacity to quickly scale operations up or down in response to call volumes. For example, the number of operators required can vary from 40 up to 275 at peak periods.”

Mr Noonan said that Billpost secured the contract for the data capture element of the local property tax and the total cost incurred to date is €288,075 in respect of 620,000 items of data captured.

The minister also confirmed that both firms secured the contract after an open competitive tender.

In a written Dáil reply to Terence Flanagan, Mr Noonan said that Revenue has confirmed to him that “the outsourcing of these components of the local property tax/household charge operation has played a major role in the success of the project, which has so far yielded in excess of €530m to the exchequer”.