Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

I issued clear audit opinions for all four appropriation accounts on this afternoon’s schedule. The 2015 appropriation account for the Office of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform records gross expenditure totalling €40.8 million, divided across two programme areas: the public service management and reform programme, on which €24.1 million was spent, or 59% of the expenditure, and the public expenditure and sectoral policy programme, which accounted for the balance. At the end of the year, the Department had underspent by a net €4.1 million relative to its budget.

Vote 12, superannuation and retired allowances, is used to pay for Civil Service and prison officer pensions. Pension payments for other public servants are charged, directly or indirectly, to other votes, including those for education, health, An Garda Síochána and Army pensions. The gross expenditure on Vote 12 in 2015 amounted to €499 million, an increase of 5.3% compared with 2014. Appropriations-in-aid, mainly comprising employee pension contributions, amounted to €136 million in 2015, up 30% from 2014. The increase was due mainly to employee contributions in respect of the public service single pension scheme, which was introduced for all public servants appointed since 2013.

An unusual feature of the account for Vote 12 is the absence of administration expenses. The Department of Finance administered the pension payments charged to Vote 12 on behalf of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and charged the associated administration costs to its own Vote. In December 2015, responsibility for administration of the pension payments transferred to Vote 18, shared services.

The 2015 appropriation account for the Vote for shared services records gross expenditure totalling €26.2 million. Overall, there was underspend of €18.7 million, almost 42% relative to the Estimate. A sum of €13.2 million was spent on activities related to PeoplePoint, which handles human resources activities centrally. A sum of €9.3 million was spent on payroll shared services, and €2.3 million on other shared services projects, including a shared financial management project. Expenditure on the payroll shared services centre was €7.8 million, or 46%, less than provided for in the Estimate, mainly due to the later than anticipated transition of certain payroll clients to the shared services office. Expenditure incurred on set-up costs for the financial management project was €8.2 million, or 78%, below estimate.

In the statement on internal financial control, the Accounting Officer draws attention to salary overpayments and steps taken to address this issue. I am carrying out a review of the issue this year and expect to include a chapter in my report on the 2016 accounts of the public services later this year.

The year 2015 was the second year of operation for the Office of Government Procurement. Gross expenditure of €14.3 million was €5.3 million, or 27%, lower than estimated. Note 3 explains that a delay in obtaining office accommodation impacted on recruitment with knock-on effects in other areas of planned non-pay expenditure, resulting in an underspend of €2.8 million. Procurement and subsequent implementation of external support services for the office also took longer than originally planned, resulting in an underspend of €2.4 million.

Chapter 3 is a standard report that aims to consolidate and summarise Vote expenditure for 2015 across all Votes and to demonstrate medium to long-term trends. Gross voted expenditure across all Votes in 2015 was €46 billion, the same as in 2014. This represents a cumulative reduction of almost 13% since 2010.