Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim mo bhuíochas leis an gCathaoirleach fá choinne an cuireadh go dtí an coiste agus gabhaim leithscéal ar son an Taoisigh. I apologise on behalf of the Taoiseach who is unable to be here.

The net Estimate for Vote 5 - Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions for 2017 is €40,676,000. The moneys provide for the salaries and expenses of the director and her staff, the cost of the local State solicitor service, fees to counsel engaged by the director to prosecute cases in the various courts and legal costs awarded against the State arising from judicial review and other legal proceedings.

A Supplementary Estimate of €418,000 is being sought for 2017 which represents a 1% increase in the net allocation. The need for the Supplementary Estimate arises from greater than budgeted expenditure on input A2 administration – non-pay and input A3 – fees to counsel, together with receipts in input B – appropriations-in-aid falling below the level budgeted for.Savings elsewhere in the Vote are insufficient to offset the need for a Supplementary Estimate.

There are a range of factors that give rise to the need for the Supplementary Estimate. I will address them in the order in which they are listed in the Vote.

In terms of the input A2 administration – non-pay, two main factors give rise to the projected overspend of €616,000 under the subhead. The first is a requirement to spend approximately €261,000 on the office's IT case management system to meet costs that arise from a major upgrade of software. The fact that the costs of this upgrade would fall in the calendar year 2017 only became apparent after the 2017 Estimates had been finalised.

The second aspect of administration – non-pay expenditure which is projected to run significantly ahead of the amount provided for 2017, has to do with the completion of a range of refurbishment projects that the Office of Public Works has undertaken in the context of moving all staff of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to one site on the Infirmary Road, Dublin. After 16 years of being split across different sites, the Office of Public Works completed works during 2017 that enabled all staff of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to be accommodated on the one site. Managing expenditure on a significant-sized capital project from annual voted expenditure is inherently difficult because of the uncertainty as to in which year costs will fall to be paid. The additional spending of approximately €355,000 projected under this heading in 2017 arises from the timing of the expenditure rather than an underestimation of refurbishment costs.

In terms of input A3 – fees to sounsel, two mainfactors give rise to the projected overspend of €1.377 million under this subhead. The first is a general increase in activity in the courts and, in particular, the Central Criminal Court with the assignment of additional judges leading to an increase in the number of sittings. The Central Criminal Court is the court that deals with the prosecution of murder and rape cases. The second factor that gave rise to the overspend under the subhead is the cost of a series of complex financial trials. Fees to prosecution counsel in excess of €1 million have been paid in these cases in 2017.As the factors that gave rise to the overspend in 2017 are likely to continue into 2018, I inform the committee that to ensure the underlying level of activity on fees to counsel does not give rise to a Supplementary Estimate again in 2018, an additional allocation of €1.54 million has been added to the subhead for 2018.

In terms of input B – appropriations-in-aid, there is a projected shortfall of €158,000. This arises from difficulties in estimating the amount of costs that will be awarded by the courts to the director in any one year and also from an over-estimation of the amount that would be realised from pension-related deductions from salaries. The additional expenditure, of which I have advised the committee, amounts to a total of €2.151 million. However, a range of savings made elsewhere in the Vote have reduced the amount required by way of Supplementary Estimate to €418,000.

I recommend the Supplementary Estimate of €418,000 to the committee.