Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

The appropriation account for Vote 24 - Justice, records gross expenditure of €661 million in 2024. This was an increase of almost €110 million, or 20%, on the prior year. Expenditure under the Vote was distributed across two programmes, namely a criminal justice pillar, which accounts for €404 million, or around 60% of the expenditure, and a civil justice pillar, which accounts for the remaining 40%, or €257 million. In broad terms, the voted expenditure in 2024 covered the administrative and service costs of the then Department of Justice and of a range of small but important service providers in the justice sector. In some cases, these are semi-autonomous divisions of the Department, such as the Probation Service and the Office of the State Pathologist. Others are statutory bodies with their own independent governance and reporting arrangements, such as the Legal Aid Board and newly established Cuan. Larger agencies in the sector, such as An Garda Síochána and the Courts Service, have their own Votes and Accounting Officers.

I issued a clear audit opinion on the appropriation account for Vote 24 but drew attention to disclosures in the statement on internal financial controls in respect of material instances of non-compliance with national procurement rules regarding contracts that operated in 2024.

At the start of June 2025, the Department was assigned responsibility for cybersecurity policy and strategy in Ireland. It discharges these functions through the National Cyber Security Centre, NCSC, which previously was part of the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment. Expenditure on the functioning of the NCSC in 2024 totalled €8.8 million. The NCSC’s remit covers the response to the increasing cyber threats of all strategically important entities in Ireland, whether public or private. In late 2021, the NCSC published cybersecurity baseline standards for the public sector which set out the measures that public bodies should implement to secure their ICT networks. The NCSC subsequently published a self-assessment form in November 2022 that public bodies could use to assess their cybersecurity defences.

Chapter 9 of my Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2023 provided an overview of the NCSC’s cybersecurity self-assessment form and shares some user experience of its application. Overall, the report concluded that the checklist is a good model for public sector bodies to use to assess their cybersecurity practices and controls. The Accounting Officer will be able to give the committee an update on the implementation of the report’s recommendations.

The Irish Prison Service is formally part of the Department of justice but is funded and accounted for separately through Vote 21. While the Secretary General of the Department is the Accounting Officer for Vote 21, the Prison Service is headed operationally by its director general.

The 2024 appropriation account for Vote 21 - Prisons, records gross expenditure of almost €501 million. A total of 68% of the expenditure, totalling €340 million, relates to pay. The remainder is spread across a range of areas including maintenance and improvements to the prison estate, equipment purchases, education and services for prisoners and other operating costs. There was a small surrender at the year’s end of €1.37 million. I issued a clear audit opinion in respect of the account.

Note 6.6 of the appropriation account provides an overview of certain non-Vote accounts operated within the Prison Service, including accounts for prisoners’ personal funds and prison shops. The note includes an update on progress made by the Prison Service in respect of voluntary mess committees, which have been an area of significant attention for the committee.

In May, the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration assumed responsibility for the provision of accommodation and related services to international protection applicants in need of these supports. The Department already had responsibility for processing applications for protection. The aggregate expenditure under the accommodation programme in 2024, when it was part of Vote 40, was €2.3 billion. Of this, €1.2 billion related to accommodation and other costs for Ukrainian beneficiaries of temporary protection, and €1.1 billion related to accommodation for others seeking international protection.

Chapter 10 of my Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2024 reviews the operation of controls over the management of contracts for the provision of accommodation services for persons seeking international protection. This included: the adequacy of due diligence checks before contracts are entered into; and the subsequent management of the contracts, with a focus on ensuring that what is paid for by taxpayers is received.

By the end of 2024, close to 33,000 international protection applicants were living in State-supported accommodation, and around three quarters of those applicants were in emergency accommodation. As mentioned earlier, expenditure of almost €1.1 billion was incurred on the provision of accommodation and related services for international protection applicants in 2024. Over 90% of the expenditure comprised payments to commercial providers.

The examination’s review of a sample of properties found that pre-contract due diligence records were significantly incomplete. Evidence of planning permission to use the property for international protection accommodation, or confirmation of exempted development, was available for only one in five of the properties examined. Insurance certificates and appropriate fire certificates were available for only around two in five of the properties. Actual signed contracts were available for just half of the sample properties reviewed.

The examination also identified gaps in the controls over payments for accommodation. In December 2023, it was established that a provider of multiple properties had been overcharging VAT and had been overpaid a total of €7.4 million. By September 2025, just €1.5 million of this had been refunded. The Department stated recovery of the balance was under review.

The ultimate objective of the Department-led project to develop a criminal justice operational hub is to enable the effective end-to-end management of cases and persons through the criminal justice system. My report examines the development of the hub between 2017 and 2024.

The 2017 business plan for the hub set a budget of €7.2 million over three years, to be funded from Vote 24 - Justice. Except for 2020, the Department has significantly underspent on the hub’s annual funding allocation.

Most of the expenditure of €4.3 million incurred by the Vote to the end of 2024 relates to consultant or contractor costs. Some additional expenditure was incurred by other Votes, such as the Courts Service and An Garda Síochána.

While many potential data transfer projects have been identified across the justice sector, just four projects have been completed in the seven years since development of the hub started. A review of two of the completed projects indicates that the benefits set for the projects appear to have been achieved. That only four projects have been completed may indicate a loss of momentum and a loss of potential net economic benefits from the use of improved technology. Planned data harvesting and capacity for the tracking of individuals’ journeys through the criminal justice system have also been suspended from the project. As a result, it is unlikely the hub will enable end-to-end management of cases in the short to medium term. The report makes recommendations about strengthening the planning and management of projects and ensuring post-project reviews address the anticipated benefits set at the project planning stage.