Mr. Kevin Meaney:

I concur with Mr. Downes. It is probably a bit early, at this stage of the year, to estimate where the capital carry-over might end up. I might give some high-level figures from the end of May, which are the most up-to-date material we have at this stage, although we will probably have the figures for end-June later this week or early next week. At the end of May, there had been some underspends in key Departments, including the Departments of Transport and Housing, Local Government and Heritage, which probably had the largest overall sums. In percentage terms, the largest were probably the Departments of Defence and Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science.

We consider the underspends to be quite understandable given the lockdown in the construction industry in the opening months of the year. Most of these Departments are indicating they will be able to catch up with the underspends in the rest of the year. They have told us that there may be some delays in the signing of contracts but that the funding will be used by the end of the year . We will keep an ongoing, monitoring approach on departmental spend and see later in the year where potential underspends will end up and where the capital carry-over might be.