Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is the last positive thing I will say to the officials. I said I would start with something nice. I wanted to have a look, and I hope it was not raised in the interim while I was out, at the surplus public expenditure moneys, SPEM, account. It is memorably named. A lot of money has ended up in this and it attracts a negative interest rate. Paragraph 1.15 of the Exchequer financial outturn for 2022 states that a "Negative interest has been charged on Central Bank accounts". We had a very small amount of money in this account in 2018. It was relatively stable between 2019 and 2020. It really spiked in 2021-2022. It costs us money to keep it there. Why do we have this €2 billion plus in there?