Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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It is striking that most of the years in question - from 2012 to 2016 - were among the tightest the country had experienced money-wise. Some of the groups identified as disadvantaged would have been doubly disadvantaged by virtue of the significant cutbacks introduced in those years and the money from the Dormant Accounts Fund became all the more important as a consequence. I find it very hard to get my head around this.

Looking at the Comptroller and Auditor General's report I am struck by the amount of money that is identified for particular projects for various Departments, sometimes for very specific projects, and then not drawn down. It is a quite sizeable amount of money. It just did not seem to be a priority. The witnesses are taking responsibility now, but we cannot talk to the people who formally had the responsibility, under whose watch it happened. I want to raise several questions.

The very fact that no review took place is very significant, because it meant that the very sizeable underspends could not be quickly reassigned to other projects if it was not possible to deliver on the initial ones. The largest is in the Department of the Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, where there was a 64% underspend. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs had a 51% underspend. There is a 94% underspend recorded for the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, but that is a smaller amount of money. Apart from the review, what measures are the witnesses going to put in place to get this money spent appropriately?