Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 19 November 2020

Public Accounts Committee

2019 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 9 – Office of the Revenue Commissioners
Central Fund Related Accounts - Revenue Account 2019

11:30 am

Mr. Niall Cody:

It is quite difficult to put an overall cost on it because we started preparing for Brexit in 2016. We started before the referendum result in the UK. In the 2017 budget we put forward a case to the Minister at the time for funding to facilitate ICT development. In that budget, we got €2 million in additional funding on the ICT framework to start work before anybody knew how anything would work out. We then started engagement with our colleagues on the infrastructure side and set up various working groups. Eventually, the Government - and I do not use the word "eventually" the way it sounds there - set up a group chaired by the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on infrastructure development. The OPW was then engaged to develop the facilities in Dublin Airport, Dublin Port and Rosslare Europort.

With regard to infrastructure, the OPW figure for 2019 was €36 million on physical infrastructure in those particular locations. That is what led to the €4.1 million supplementary budget. The €36 million was apportioned between the various agencies. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine was the biggest element because it has the biggest requirement for physical infrastructure. That work continued into 2020. I believe the figure for Revenue in next week's Supplementary Estimates for 2020 expenditure is €13.7 million. I can give all of the actual details to the-----