State ‘wasting millions’ on high credit card fees

Millions of euro of taxpayers’ monies have been wasted by government departments on exorbitant debit and credit card transaction fees despite warnings to change, a senior TD has revealed.

Chairperson of the influential Dáil Finance Committee, Ciarán Lynch, has welcomed plans to finally reform the system by 2016, but expressed concern that €6m a year of public money has been lost by not moving sooner on the issue.

Mr Lynch raised the alarm in January after exposing the fact departments have no limit for such commission fees, allowing card merchants to charge between 0.75% to 2.79% on transactions paid by the public for duties, services and levies.