Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I have question for the Department on the budgeting process. I was looking through Vote 34. We are supposed to pay attention to anything that is plus or minus 5%. The following is just from two pages in front of me. There was a provision of €500,000 for mortgage provision. The outturn was €397,000, which means there was an underspend of 20%. There was also a provision for "affordable housing/shared ownership" of €3 million. The outturn was €1.45 million, so that means there was an underspend of 50%. There was also a provision of €17 million for the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF - which I will return to - and a 50% underspend. There was a provision for pyrite or mica remediation of €60 million. The outturn was €28.7 million. Notwithstanding all we said about Covid or X, Y and Z, the miscellaneous provisions jumped out at me. This does not come under programme A, but this committee convulsed itself over €75,000 being paid to Ryan Tubridy. We have €500,000 of additional receipts listed here under miscellaneous, and the explanation we have been given is that they are hard to make provision for. We have this in a lot of places.

What are the checks and balances? Mr. Doyle knows that he will end up in front of the Committee of Public Accounts to justify what is in Vote 34. What are the processes within his Department in that regard and what are the processes when his Department engages with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform whereby he tells people that this is not good enough and that the Estimate is wildly off? It makes the job really difficult for people sitting on this side of the table when there is such a huge variance between what is said by witnesses at different Oireachtas committees when their Departments are looking for sign-off on the Estimates, versus what is said when they come back to us. What are the processes so that we can do substantially and significantly better than what we see here?