Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 December 2021

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Fiscal Assessment Report: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council

Photo of Seán CanneySeán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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Perhaps a lot of it is to do with the fact that local authorities do not put in their returns until December as they are so busy carrying out road works, etc., so it is not known what it is until 31 December when all of the books are closed off and we start totting it up, which is a bad system. We should have a system where if a Department has committed to a job, at least it is reported that the contract is in place and funding is committed and will be spent by the end of the year. While one can see what has been given out from each Department, one will also see what is committed in terms of what will be spent before the end of the year, for example, if there is going to be an underspend because the Department have not met its commitments, for example, the contract did not happen within the timeframe. We need to shake up that a bit more and bring a more commercial sense to it. More than anything else, we just want to see what the cash flow is going to be like but we do not seem to have that and that kind of commercialised thinking about it seems to be lacking. I do not know if the witnesses agree with me.