Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and Ministers of State for their opening statements.

The role of this committee in scrutinising Estimates is important and one that a number of us take seriously. We do that by tracking what is committed on budget day through the abridged Estimates Volume, how that is then finalised in the Revises Estimates Volume in December, and the subsequent changes to that through Supplementary Estimates. In most of the years I have been on this committee, there have been three, four or, as in this instance, five changes after the budget’s announcement. There is nothing wrong with that and the Government is entitled to make those changes, but it is important that this committee have documentation to be able to track those changes. Traditionally, officials in the Department, the Minister and his predecessors have been forthcoming with that information.

The Minister will remember that our previous conversation about Estimates in a select committee meeting ended in a row. How very surprising for one of our engagements. It was over his unwillingness to provide me with the 2024 abridged Estimates Volume, AEV. I told him it was unfortunate that he would not provide it, given that it would be materially relevant to the questions I was going to ask about the Estimates before us today and it meant I would have to waste the officials’ time, the freedom of information section’s time and the Ceann Comhairle’s office’s time in having to squeeze that information out of the Minister. And that is exactly what happened. I submitted a request to the Department. The information was not provided. I made a formal complaint to the Ceann Comhairle. He reverted to me with a letter the Minister had written to him in which the Minister actually claimed that there was no such thing as the AEV breakdown I was seeking. I then had to submit an FOI request, to which I received the information I had requested. The FOI response from the Department was interesting. According to it, a new record had been created to assist my query. This suggests that the record I was seeking did not exist prior to that.

The problem is that, separately, I had to FOI the Department of public expenditure asking for this information. I received a record from it, that being, an email to it from an official in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage prior to the budget with the very document I wanted. The information I requested from the Minister was there in October 2023.

I am not looking to have a row with the Minister about this, but it is such a waste of officials’ time, my time and the time of others when in previous years the information we requested was just given to us. As the Minister knows, the Ceann Comhairle has now written to him twice asking him to explain how he could have said something did not exist and a new record was being created only for us to discover that there had been a record all the time. I am not in any way criticising any official, as I know the officials work diligently on the Estimates, but it is an extraordinary set of affairs that information that has always been provided to committee members previously was not only refused, but there was an attempt to suggest that it did not exist. Thankfully, we now have it. When we request the abridged Estimates Volume after the publication of the budget, I only ask that the Minister provide it. We all know it is subject to change and we accept that that change is fine, but those changes are materially significant, particularly since Deputy O’Brien has become Minister, and we have an important role in scrutinising them.

Regarding the Estimates in front of us, I will make a comment and then ask a specific question. When the abridged Estimates for a number of capital subheads, the outturn and the various changes for last year are compared, the level of underspend is dramatic. For example, there was more than €300 million of an underspend in local authority funding. The underspend in the capital advance leasing facility was €18 million, €70 million in the affordable housing fund and €99 million in the cost-rental equity loan. To be fair, rather than as in previous years a large portion of that money not being used, the Department redistributed it and the capital assistance scheme increased significantly, as did others. Within the capital programmes for the delivery of new housing, though, the Department underspent last year by more than €200 million.

The Estimates in front of us have a reported carry-over of €151 million. What was that meant to be spent on that it was not spent on? The information may well be in the document we have, as it is normally listed in the formal Estimates booklet. Could someone explain the underspend to me or point to where it is in this document? It is usually contained in a very small footnote that is difficult to read. There is obviously a gap between the €206 million underspend across the key new social and affordable housing delivery programmes and the carry-over. I assume the Department has spent that money on something else. I would have no issue with that. Has that money been spent on something else or has anything been surrendered?