Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 22 May 2013

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Finance

Estimates for Public Services 2013
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance (Revised)
Vote 8 - Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (Revised)
Vote 9 - Office of the Revenue Commissioners (Revised)
Vote 10 - Office of the Appeal Commissioners (Revised)

5:10 pm

Photo of Ciarán LynchCiarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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I thank the Deputy. Are there any more questions on these subheads? I will take all the questions together.

Obviously as the Department with ministerial responsibility for running the bailout programme and the budgets that underpin it, we are very prudent on expenditure. We had significant savings in 2012 because of the very tight management of budgets. This year we are looking for €1 million more than the outturn in 2012, despite the fact that we have the Presidency. The Deputy is right in saying that the travel and subsistence is due principally to the Presidency. For example in subhead (ii) it was additional staff, outward focus on increasing numbers of EU meetings. In subhead (iii) the increase is entirely due to a training budget as we increased the in-house skill base and in subhead (v) the additional provision for document management and PQ systems will lead to more efficiencies. We had 237 parliamentary questions yesterday between oral and written. We want to provide a very good service to Members of the House and resources are needed to do that. Subhead (vi) covers an additional premises cost for EU and the provision of temporary staff. In regard to the numbers involved, we brought in many people at AO level for the purpose of upskilling the Department particularly in economics and accountancy and people with tax expertise. Many young staff have been recruited, most of whom are at graduate level with these skills. That is in response to many requests over a number of years from Members of the House to upskill the Department in terms of professional qualification to deal with the very intricate work that is now being conducted in the Department.