Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

I will deal briefly with each of the Votes. The 2017 Appropriation Account for Vote 3 - Office of the Attorney General shows gross expenditure of just over €14.5 million in respect of the programme for the provision of legal advice to the Government, Departments and offices, and for legislative drafting services. The expenditure included Exchequer funding of €2.2 million for the Law Reform Commission, LRC. Appropriations-in-aid totalled €668,000 for the year, almost all of which related to retained pension-related deductions from staff salaries. A net surplus of just over €1 million was due for surrender at the end of 2017.

The Office of the Chief State Solicitor also provides legal services to central government Departments and offices, including representing their interests in actions taken on behalf of, or against, the State. This office does not charge for its services.

The 2017 Appropriation Account for the office's Vote records gross expenditure of €33.1 million. This mainly comprised administration costs of €18.3 million and payments of fees to counsel totalling €13.6 million. Appropriations-in-aid totalled €1.1 million. The surplus for surrender at the year's end was €349,000.

At the end of 2017, the accumulated value of taxed costs awarded to the State but not yet recovered totalled €9.6 million. This was marginally up on the comparable position in 2016. Receipts in 2017 totalled €397,000, representing only about 4% of the 2017 year-end figure.

In my report on the Appropriation Account for Vote 6, I drew attention to a material level of non-compliance with EU and national procurement rules in respect of contracts operated by the Office of the Chief State Solicitor in 2017. This is explained by the Accounting Officer in the statement on internal financial control.

The DPP is the State's chief prosecutor in alleged criminal cases, and is independent in the exercise of her functions.

The 2017 Appropriation Account for Vote 5, for the office of the director, records total gross expenditure of €41.7 million, charged to a single programme. Administration costs, including salaries, amounted to €16.8 million. Payments to State solicitors, who act outside the Dublin region on behalf of the director, amounted to €6.6 million. Fees paid to counsel retained by the director totalled €16.4 million in 2017. The original voted provision for this area of spending was €14.5 million. The additional expenditure of €1.9 million was attributed to a greater than expected level of activity in certain courts. To accommodate the additional spending on fees, a Supplementary Estimate was voted. This allocated expected savings on other subheads to meet the additional fees, and increased the resources available to the director by a net €418,000. At the year end, the net outturn on the Vote was a surplus of just under €190,000, which was due for surrender to the Exchequer.