Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To help Deputy Boyd Barrett and Deputies McGrath and Doherty, the breakdown I have of the consultancy under this head for 2014 is €4.3 million in banking and €1 million for the national payments initiative and for the single European payments area. There are many communications costs in making people aware of these, and they are a great benefit and are well worth doing. There is also €0.75 million for SME, credit provision, mortgages and all that area, and some of that is communication also.

On the banking aspect, I can estimate legal fees on banking where cases are running from 2013 into 2014. It is not rocket science to estimate that there will be legal costs, and to put a figure on it, but if something happens unexpectedly mid-year and new costs arise, we need a provision for it but it is an estimate. It may be overspent or underspent but the tendency in Departments is to provision to ensure they do not have overspends because overspends are a black mark; underspends are not a black mark. These are estimates. They are not hard figures, especially on the consultancy side, but the variation on them will not be very big.

The Deputy is right that there are percentage increases across the consultancy heads this year because we need to buy in a certain amount of expertise for new projects but the overall Estimate for the Department has decreased. At a time when costs are increasing the overall Estimate has decreased. The increased funding for consultancy is being funded with savings within the Department and it is not a further draw on the Exchequer.