Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is a really important issue. We have a record overall budget for capital expenditure for 2021. If one includes the carry forward from last year, it is approaching €11 billion. Of course, the reason we have that carry forward is because of the underspend in 2020, which can, in part, be attributed to the restrictions imposed earlier in 2020. We had an overall underspend on the capital side of more than €900 million, of which over €700 million was carried forward to 2021. We are in 2021 and, again, a large part of the construction sector is shut down so inevitably that will have an impact on the delivery of projects, the timeline and the spending of that money. I have asked my officials to monitor that very closely and, as the year progresses, to provide options to me, as Minister, on what we can do to make sure that as much as possible of our public capital investment programme is delivered. The definition of capital expenditure includes areas of expenditure that one might regard as not traditionally capital such as digital or research and development. A certain amount of grants that can be provided constitute capital spending as well so the Deputy will be aware of all of the money we provided for the restart grants for businesses in 2020, which was in the region of €700 million, and the funding we provided to our schools with regard to minor works grants and the ICT grants. That all counts as capital expenditure so if the major building projects get delayed, we will see what other ways there are of supporting the sectors that will be impacted negatively by that. The Deputy raised a very fair point and one that I-----