Ms Katherine Licken:

I will add some colour and background to that, and more context. We have been discussing the Supplementary Estimate with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform since October. If you recall, 2021 was a hugely difficult year because there was so much uncertainty. We did not know what new schemes there would be. I was trying to count how many schemes we delivered ourselves that year. These were often done at very short notice, when we had to come up a scheme because the sectors were in such trouble. The Supplementary Estimates were discussed with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform from October on, when we did not have visibility on our end-year expenditure. Notwithstanding that, we included €30 million worth of virements in the Supplementary Estimate. It went to the select committee at the end of November and was signed off by the Dáil in December. While technically there was a week between the two, the time-lag was actually bigger. Even in that week, if you were to even take it as a week, we spent €112 million alone.

We also had emerging pressures on the broadcasting side. Local media was in a very difficult space. We saw it as a very good use of a virement to put it into the Sound and Vision fund. We ran three different schemes that came out of it: live music broadcasting projects because live music was in trouble, Irish-language content production, a specific climate-themed round, and a general round of Sound and Vision. That is what it funded.

This past year, we also had a Supplementary Estimate of €35 million where we added €15 million in virements to deal with the energy crisis. We took €15 million in savings on the culture side and put it into energy savings for culture. The point is well made that if a virement is proportionally big relative to where it is going, we will certainly look at it.