Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Watt and his colleagues. He has given a broad-ranging summary of the activities of his Department, which was set up approximately two years ago. I want to deal with some of the financial side of it.

I will start with Chapter 12 - Vote Accounting, the overall Vote for the entire Government. I have a few topics but I will deal with this one first. Gross voted expenditure in 2011 was €49.7 billion. Mr. Watt mentioned the net figure of €45.6 billion. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is a new Department and people would see it as having an overall role in monitoring and managing Government expenditure across all Departments. In the year in question, the gross expenditure was approximately €49.7 billion.

In September of last year, just over 12 months ago, the Comptroller and Auditor General issued his report on all the Votes and his annual report on various matters in Departments. That report for the year we are talking about - I do not refer to the one announced this week - would have highlighted various items, such as loss of income to the taxpayer in some Departments, waste of taxpayers' money in other chapters, money spent where there was no or little return - what the technocrats call nugatory expenditure - overpayments and issues of non-tendering. Now that there is a new Department, can Mr. Watt outline, out of that €50 billion, how much the Comptroller and Auditor General highlighted in this report for the year in question would fall into that area of loss of income to the taxpayer, waste of money and money spent for bad value? Given that he is the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, what is his summary? The Comptroller and Auditor General issues an annual report. I presume Mr. Watt digests it thoroughly. Can he give me the summary of figures in that report? We will then move on to what actions he took to ensure those issues did not arise in 2012 or 2013.