Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Many Departments had savings and there were technical Supplementary Estimates for some to allow certain areas of expenditure and those were the two significant Supplementary Estimates. In the social protection area, a chunk of that was a short-fall in PRSI income. It was not a requirement for an additional spend, it was a re-labelling of spending, where money that came into the Exchequer that was originally labelled as PRSI as it came in from the Revenue Commissioners was actually universal social charge or tax. PRSI goes directly to the Department of Social Protection. If it is not PRSI, it is general tax and goes into the Exchequer, which leaves a short-fall into the funding stream for social protection. That had to be made up by an additional vote of money. It was a balancing exercise where no net extra money was spent, it was just money being re-labelled. We tried to deal with that short-fall in PRSI in the budgetary measures we announced this year.

The figures are in the document we sent the committee. The unspent amount of the total capital last year was €252.4 million and the carry over was €107.2 million. The money that was not spent and not carried over amounted to €145 million and that goes back to the Exchequer.