Your questions answered by DOMINIC COYLE

Why put children on private health insurance?

What are the benefits of having private health insurance for children given that all childrens hospitals are public. Does having insurance for the children impact on choice and speed of access?

Also, notwithstanding the fact that the hospital is public, are there charges you could be required to pay directly if a child has to spend time in hospital and we had neither private insurance for them or a medical card.

- Ms J.O’R., Dublin

AS YOU have guessed yourself, the value in having private medical insurance for children comes down to choice and speed.

You are quite right that children’s hospital beds are all in public wards, except for quarantine purposes. Therefore, having private hospital cover will not make any difference to the accommodation provided if your child is unlucky enough to have to be admitted to hospital.

However, private health insurance can certainly make a difference in terms of the amount of time you will have to wait for a outpatient’s consultation. With insurance, you will generally get access to a consultant in weeks; on a HSE waiting list, it could be months or longer.

Equally, while the public system will cater for acute and emergency care, if you are looking for elective procedures on behalf of your child, that will not be covered unless you have insurance, and certainly not a as quickly.

It is for all these reasons that , in the old days, when we simply had VHI plans A-E, the advice was that you put children no higher than Plan B because there simply was no further benefit to them up the chain.

Revenue and the move to tax State pensions

Would you know what the current policy of Revenue is in relation to the furore after Christmas as a result of the infamous letters to OAPs. Has it been decided to (a) forget the whole thing, (b) start taxing state pensioners who also have occupational pensions from now on - i.e. January 12th, or (c) go back to when these pensions should have been declared and taxed? I’m sure many OAPs wish to know but are fearful of approaching Revenue.

- Mr J.O’B., Kildare

I AM sure they do, and are. As far as I am aware, there has been no change of policy at the Revenue even if there is some disquiet at the rather ham-fisted way they approached people in the first place.

There is certainly no possibility of them simply “forgetting about it”. There is an ongoing tax liability here and it would be fundamentally unfair of Revenue to allow some people to get away without paying their taxes when others must. In any case, they would attract the ire of the Comptroller Auditor General (the State spending watchdog) if they were to do so.

So (a) is out, (b) is certainly true. Revenue now has details of people in receipt of State pensions, some of whom failed to mention this themselves in their dealings with the tax authorities.

They can expect that, from here on, they will be taxed on the basis of their total income - as it should be.

The issue that is somewhat more uncertain is your option (c) - whether Revenue will pursue those people who should have been paying tax on their State pensions because of their other income – from occupational pensions, dividends, directors’ fees or whatever.

Revenue have carefully made no statement on this, nor are they likely to. However, it seems likely – and previous experience would seem to point to – Revenue will not pursue people owing relatively small amounts because the cost of chasing them would be more than any tax income recovered. This is especially so where failure to notify Revenue of their income seems inadvertent - i.e. people on PAYE who assumed that, as in their working life, Revenue was notified by others of their liability.

However, the tax authorities will certainly reserve the right to pursue for back payment – and penalties – people they believe deliberately withheld information in order to avoid tax liabilities.

It is likely that anyone with an outstanding liability who approaches the Revenue voluntarily will face a tax bill. Of course, those failing to “front up” could face interest and penalties on top of the original liability.

What recourse do I have if an app goes wrong

How do I get a refund on an iPhone app? The recent Bridgestone 100 Best Restaurants v1.0 which cost €6.99 does not work.

- Ms A.M., Dublin

Problems with apps are one of the perils of our increasingly wired world, with smartphones now ubiquitous in Irish homes.

In general, to be fair, apps work fairly reliably – even if there remains some concern about security and data privacy issues – as evidenced by the Twitter, which among others, was cited last week as downloading people’s entire smartphone contact lists and keeping them when users thought they were simply accessing them on the phone.

I can’t say whether there is or is not a problem with the Bridgestone 100 Best Restaurants app but, as with most things, your route to satisfaction is back through the retailer, in this case, the iTunes store.

If you log into your iTunes account and access your purchase history, you will see a button which allows you to “report a problem” with your app.

If they do not get back to you, there is also a facility on the website to report problems.

This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice. Please senmd your questions to QA, c/o Dominic Coyle, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2, or to dcoyle@irishtimes.com. No personal correspondence will be entered into.