Recently, a spate of scare stories in the Irish press about a so-called crackdown on Irish shoppers returning home from New York left some visitors here reeling in fright that their goods might be impounded, but Shay Doyle, manager of customs enforcement at Dublin Airport, told the Irish Voice there’s no reason for alarm.
“People are free to go and do as much shopping as they like, as long as they keep to the rules when they return,” said Doyle. “The rules are they are entitled to €175 worth of goods for an adult; for anyone up to the age of 15 it’s €90.”
Passengers with goods in excess of those monetary allowances should go into the red channel when they arrive back in Ireland and declare the goods. The relevant duty and VAT[Value Added Tax] will be assessed on the spot.
“If they go through the green channel – in other words, if they’re saying they have no goods to declare – then their goods are liable for seizure if its determined they’re not telling the truth. Their goods may be released to them if they pay the VAT and the duty plus a 100 percent penalty,” Doyle said. “We can hold onto the goods if they haven’t got the money and they can come back and pay it.”
Dublin Airport customs agents have been carrying out operations on so-called shopping flights since early October and they argue that the risk isn’t huge to Irish revenue. To date, they have found no evidence that there are any large-scale purchases of laptops and iPods and other luxury goods going on.
“Officers generally know whether the goods coming into the country are new or not. If an officer isn’t satisfied, he or she will stop them,” said Doyle.
“It’s fairly obvious to us who’s been shopping. But at the same time we’re not Draconian. We’re not out to spoil Christmas. We use our discretion within reason.”
Dublin Airport customs agents have seen it all, so they know what to look for. Last year, 22 million passengers passed through the airport and 24 million are expected to pass through it in 2007.
Since October of this year, customs agents have stopped 4,036 passengers, 2,484 of whom were Irish residents. A total of 1,859 bags were fully searched and €8,700 worth of VAT and customs duty was recovered. As the agents themselves would argue, that’s not an insignificant haul.
“In the same period we’ve been hearing about so-called shopping trips to New York we’ve caught €950,000 worth of drugs and 5.7 million illegal cigarettes. We have our own priorities too,” said Doyle.
“I mean a question might be do you want us to stop the drugs coming in that are killing our kids? We can have officers spending all their time taking €20 or €30 in VAT on a few Nike t-shirts from New York, or we can focus our attention elsewhere. You have to get some perspective into it, you know.”
