Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 8 December 2015

Select Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Estimates for Public Services 2015
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary)

2:00 pm

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I find this a little disconcerting. The Minister is dead right in that it is all in the profile published by Department of Finance at the end of November and he is correct that there is a much bigger Estimate this year. The Minister has €1.242 billion this year compared to having had €1.175 billion. Comparing this year's spend to last year's spend, we would expect the Department to be well ahead because it has much more money to spend over 12 months. I did not do up profile, the Minister did. He and his officials are the people who have declared at the end of November that they are behind their own target, not my target, by €115 million, which when taken out of €1 billion is more than 10% behind. I asked a reasonable question because we are voting money here today. What is behind given that his Department is €115 million behind in terms of €87 million on the current side and €28 million on the capital side. Can somebody, either here or this evening when the Minister goes back to the Department, print it out like they did for the mid-year in a useful little table? I would have thought we would have got a similar table today and that we would have got notes setting out that while we have fallen way behind the Department will be dishing out €300 million, plus the €65 million, in December.

It is easy to write the cheque for Europe; that is a one-minute job. I thought we would have got that information and we would have known, line by line, where we are behind with the profile. As I said, it is the Minister's profile. If he did not expect to spend €1 billion and only expected to spend €945,000, a serious question he should ask his finance people is, why the expenditure was not profiled for €945,000?