Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

The 2022 appropriation account for Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine records gross expenditure of €1.89 billion. Appropriations-in-aid of the Vote amounted to €409 million. The surplus of the amount provided over the net amount applied in the year was €122.5 million. The Department received permission to carry €27.5 million in unspent 2022 capital allocations over for spending in 2023. The remaining €95 million was liable for surrender back to the Exchequer. The appropriation account is presented under four programme headings. The largest by value is the farm sector support and controls programme which, with spending of €953 million, accounts for over 50% of the Vote gross expenditure. I issued a clear audit opinion in respect of the account.

However, I drew attention to the Accounting Officer's disclosure of certain instances of non-compliance with procurement rules in respect of contracts that operated during 2022. I also drew attention to the Accounting Officer's disclosure in the statement on internal financial control to two instances of duplicate payments that arose in 2022 due to error. The overpayments had a combined value of €7.2 million. The Accounting Officer stated the overpayments have been recovered and that controls have been improved to prevent a reoccurrence.

A number of the schemes provided for in Vote 30 are co-funded by the EU. That EU funding is brought to account in the Vote as appropriations-in-aid. Separately, the Department is also the accredited paying agency in Ireland for direct EU payment schemes that are not co-funded by Ireland. Such EU payments, including the single farm payment to farmers, are accounted for separately from the Vote and are not audited by my office. A summary of the EU-related transactions is disclosed in note 6.1 of the appropriation account. In total, EU payments into the Vote and EU direct payments amounted to just over €1.5 billion for 2022.

Subhead C7 of the appropriation account provides for payments into the horse and greyhound fund. Issues from the fund are made to Horse Racing Ireland and Rásaíocht Con Éireann, formerly Bord na gCon. During 2022, €70.4 million was issued to Horse Racing Ireland and €17.6 million to Rásaíocht Con Éireann. In 2022, subhead C7 was also utilised to make a one-off payment of €6.2 million to the Irish National Stud to increase its share capital.

The report before the committee today examines the Department's management of its valuable and diverse property portfolio, including how it reports on those assets in its appropriation account. At the end of 2022, the Department had 85 buildings and plots of land in its Vote asset portfolio. The Vote asset portfolio is set to grow substantially in the future with the planned incorporation of the six fishery harbour centres and their properties into the Department's appropriation account. The examination found the Department did not have a centralised estate management system in place and the Department's risk register did not recognise any risks related to its property portfolio, such as the risk of encroachment. Over two thirds of the plots of land held by the Department were inherited from the former Land Commission more than 20 years ago. Much of that property comprises bogland that is subject to turbary rights. The Department did not have a register of turbary rights holders, meaning it does not know who has right of access to these lands to cut turf. The Department therefore did not have full control over these assets.

The Department has not determined a valuation basis for its properties and does not recognise a value for them in its statement of financial position. A comparison of the Department's asset register with that of the OPW found five properties recorded on both registers. Separately, in the past five years, the Department discovered 24 plots of land and buildings that should have been recorded on its asset register. These are often identified following receipt of an external query, such as in estate cases or boundary queries.

Around 7% of the Department's landholding comprises forest plots which in most cases form part of larger forest sites that are controlled and managed by Coillte. Although it was agreed in principle in the 1990s that these would transfer to Coillte, a mechanism was not devised for the transfer until 2015. At the end of 2022, there remained a total of 33 forest plots yet to be transferred.

The report recommends the Department put a centralised estate management system in place and that its annual risk assessment exercise include consideration of the particular risks attached to the management of its estate portfolio. It also recommends the Department determine a valuation basis for the properties it holds in order that they are reported in its statement of financial position and that it completes the legal transfer of the remaining forest plots to Coillte.