Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

I thank the Chairman. The 2015 appropriation account for Vote 31 - Transport, Tourism and Sport received a clear audit opinion, with no material issues arising for reporting. The account records gross expenditure of €1.73 billion in 2015. Receipts into the Vote totalled €406 million, €370 million of which was accounted for by a transfer of funding from the local government fund, which the committee will be aware is substantially funded by motor taxation receipts.

The gross Vote expenditure in 2015 was spread across five expenditure programmes, as outlined in the diagram on screen. The bulk of the spend was under the Department’s land transport programme, accounting for 81% of its total expenditure. I understand that the Accounting Officer will provide more detail on the programme expenditure in his opening remarks.

Just under 85% of the Vote expenditure related to funding provided to other public bodies in the form of current and capital funding. A number of the bodies are significant grant awarding bodies in their own right. I have prepared a diagram which is on the next page of my statement - it might be put up the screen - which tries to summarise and categorise the bodies under the aegis of the Department. I will explain the diagram.

A number of the bodies the Department overseas are within my audit remit and so there are reports on the financial statements of those bodies and they come before the committee. The more substantial ones that fall into that category are Transport Infrastructure Ireland, the National Transport Authority, Fáilte Ireland and Sport Ireland. All of those are substantial grant awarding bodies in their own right.

In addition, there are other bodies under the aegis of the Department which are substantially funded by the Department for their operations or which are regulators. All of those come within my remit, for instance, the Road Safety Authority, the Medical Bureau of Road Safety, the Commission for Railway Regulation, the Commission for Aviation Regulation and the Marine Casualty Investigation Board.

Funding is also provided from the Vote to Tourism Ireland Limited. This is an all-Ireland body that was set up under the 1998 agreement which is audited by me in conjunction with my equivalent in Northern Ireland. It also receives funding in Northern Ireland.

Then there is a set of commercial State bodies under the aegis of the Department that are not audited by me - members will be familiar with that - and therefore do not directly fall within the remit of the committee either. These include the CIE Group, the harbour boards, Dublin Airport Authority, the Shannon Group and the Irish Aviation Authority. I also pointed out that there is funding from the Department to Sport Ireland and through it to national sports governing bodies and local sports clubs and so on. Again, they are not audited by me but, depending on the scale of the funding, I may have inspection rights.

Finally I draw attention in the diagram to the existence of the Irish Coast Guard, which is part of the Department. It is an agency within it. I prepared the diagram because I thought there were quite a number of bodies and it might be helpful to the committee to understand the relationship between the bodies and the Department.

On the Vote outturn for 2015, Dáil Éireann approved a Supplementary Estimate of a net €100 million for Vote 31 in November 2015. This was mainly to allow additional capital funding for investment in roads, rail and light rail networks and bus fleet. At the year end, a net €22 million remained unspent. The sum of €16.1 million in unspent capital funding was carried over to 2016 with the agreement of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. As a result, just under €6 million was liable for surrender at the end of the year.