Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My understanding is also that, bizarrely, there is a contingent liability on all the money. In other words, it is still on the State's book. When the Minister of State spends the money and goes to the Department of Finance looking for permission to spend more money, the Department will tell him that there is a still a contingent liability on the State for all of the money that was ever taken into the Dormant Accounts Fund.

The fund came into operation in 2001 or 2002. It definitely goes back that far.

There has not been a single year where the incomings have been more than the outgoings. I understand that the average amount coming in from the Dormant Accounts Fund is €20 million net per annum. It used to be at any rate. The Minister of State can check this out if I give him the figures. If the outgoings are more than the incomings, we are saying that people who left money in banks 50, 60 or 70 years ago have suddenly been able to establish ownership of it. They are probably long dead, so establishing a right to the money would be fairly ingenious. Even if they could, there is €110 million to meet their entitlement. If all of that, plus the other money that has been allocated, is spent, then there is still this year's incomings.

I will give the Minister of State an example of my argument. The State writes off bank loans every now and again, or it used to when we had a Central Bank of our own. It would decide that there was X amount that would never come back. There was a windfall for the Exchequer. It is time that we put a stop to the fiction that everyone who ever put money into a dormant account will come looking for it. We know following 20 years of this scheme that this is not happening. In fact, the opposite is happening, with more and more money becoming available. Has the Minister of State had discussions with the Department of Finance or would he consider doing so? Otherwise, it will tell him every time he looks for money that this is a contingent liability on the State and, therefore, Exchequer funding. It is not actually dormant account funding, all of which is counted as a liability on the State's balance sheet. Have I explained myself badly?