Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our witnesses and thank them for their attendance. I have another committee meeting after this one so I apologise for having to leave after my questioning. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is broad and so are my questions. I look forward to engaging with each and every witness.

I will start with programme A. Mr. Gleeson mentioned animal welfare. I noticed that the current spend on this is €3 million less than was spent in 2019. On the capital side, only half was spent compared with what was estimated to be spent in 2019. Could Mr. Gleeson elaborate on that and why that came to pass?