Govt pay €470k in interest to Revenue after pension contributions error
Updated / Thursday, 10 Jul 2025 16:09
A senior civil servant has revealed that the Government has paid almost €470k in interest to Revenue after an error in pension contributions was identified.
David Moloney, Secretary General, Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation (DEPR), said that interest payments of €468,744 have been made.
He was appearing before the Committee of Public Accounts to answer questions on the department’s accounts for 2023.
It recently emerged that a pool of 13,000 retired civil servants, as well as Ministers, are to have their pension deductions checked for incorrect payments made by DEPR.
Mr Moloney was responding to Fine Gael TD James Geoghegan, who said that, “not paying the Revenue monies that are owed to the Revenue is about as high and serious an issue as you can possibly imagine”.
Deputy Geoghegan acknowledged earlier comments by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) which, the Deputy said, noted the “complexity involved in this particular type of tax that was not paid”.
He asked if further penalties might be imposed on the department.
Mr Moloney replied that “any further action” Revenue might take “is a matter for them”.
But the C&AG, Seamus McCarthy, clarified that, as a voluntary disclosure had been made, “there may not be penalities”.
He offered to provide a note to the committee outlining the “rules around this”.
Mr Moloney had first said that the interest payments had amounted to €430,000, a figure which he then repeated before later correcting, saying the payments amounted to €468,744.
Asked if there have been other failures to pay Revenue, Mr Moloney said: “I’m not aware of any other instance affecting the department, but over-payments and under-payments do occur occassionally”.
Niamh Duff, Principal Officer at DEPR said, “In very minor instances … we would get charged, but no, not to the amount” seen in this case.
She agreed with the Deputy’s assertion that such a large penalty was “a very unique scenario”.
