Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The reason for this is that we have taken over responsibility for maintenance of all Departments. Up to now, there was an amount contained in their Estimates which they spent on maintaining their own buildings. We recently got a decision of Government, in consequence of which we are going to maintain their buildings and they have given us this money to do so. They put us in funds for that purpose. For that reason there is now much greater demand on our work, as one might expect. The big saving is that where there were up to six people in a Department managing its maintenance, we are now doing this for them which frees up a group of people to do many other tasks in that Department. We are also getting savings by aggregating the work and having greater economies of scale. That is the reason the amount has increased so much.