Abtran gets €11.7m in fees from Revenue since 2013

Outsourcing firm Abtran, which operates the helpline for the State’s Local Property Tax, has received fees of €11.7m since March of 2013 from the Revenue Commissioners.

And new figures show Abtran got €1.14m from the Revenue for providing the helpline service in or the first six months of this year

In 2015, the Revenue paid fees of €2.38 to the Cork-based firm and payments of €4.65m in 2014.

Abtran, which started out with only six people in 1997, now employs 2,000.

In 2013, Abtran secured the contract from Irish Water to operate its call centre.

Its clients include the Road Safety Authority, the Health Service Executive, Aviva and Sky.

The move by Revenue to outsource the work to Abtran had been criticised by the union representing many workers at the Revenue, the Civil and Public Service Union.

It claims its members could administer the Local Property Tax for less than half the amount.

However, Revenue has countered its existing systems could not have supported such demand without the option of outsourcing.

Revenue has also said the contract for on-call services was a response to the unpredictability of the demand which has turned out to the extremely high.

The Revenue has also argued the on-call service would not have been outsourced if the service could have been managed within Revenue’s capacity and resources.

The most recent figures show the 2016 compliance rate is estimated to be 95%.

Last year, Abtran said it would create another 100 jobs at its offices at the IFSC.

The new roles included data analysts, applications developers, digital media specialists and project managers.