Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to raise questions on this issue before we vote on it. However, on the basis of what the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources has said, I have real concerns about whether Fine Gael can support this Supplementary Estimate. The proposals under discussion would provide an additional capital expenditure of €16.2 million to Sustainable Energy Ireland under the heading of energy conservation in order to meet grant aid commitments which have already been agreed by the agency.

Fine Gael is supportive of the greener homes initiative, the reheat scheme outlined by the Minister, the house of tomorrow programme and the warmer homes scheme. These represent positive developments and deserve funding. However, an issue arises in terms of how the funding will be provided. This discussion should not be redirected towards accusations that Fine Gael or any other party has reservations about energy conservation or the merits of greener homes schemes.

We need to clarify three issues with the Minister before we can support this Supplementary Estimate. We want an explanation as to how Sustainable Energy Ireland was able to write cheques that it could not cash. Why did SEI overspend to such a level during 2007? We also need to clarify the source of the additional €16.2 million. Unfortunately, the Minister's contribution failed to set out the source of €10 million of that allocation. He instead gave a general statement regarding the MANs programme and multi-annual funding. I cannot accept that €10 million can be taken from a programme without negative consequences. The third and most important issue concerns an explanation on how the Minister can transfer money from a completely different budget area and not expect a negative impact on other capital investment programmes.

With regard to SEI's overspending, the agency was given a total capital allocation of €17.5 million in the original budget Estimate, which represented a 7% increase on 2006. As a result of additional funding in the 2007 budget and a re-allocation of some energy capital within the Department, the capital figure in the revised Estimate increased to €31 million. The brief we received from the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources states that despite the increase it was clear to the Department from the start of the year that SEI would be challenged on capital funding for 2007. Therefore, even though I would like to have agreed with Deputy Burton when she commented during the Order of Business on the humility of the Minister to admit his Department got the figures wrong, the facts do not bear that out. His Department tells me that it knew from the beginning of the year — to be fair to Deputy Eamon Ryan, he was not Minister at the time — that capital funding problems would arise for SEI when the budget was allocated. The obvious issue that somebody in my position must raise is that, if it was known that SEI was not receiving sufficient money, either the plans for capital expenditure must be reduced or more money must be allocated at the start of the year. One cannot allow a situation wherein the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Eamon Ryan, gives Sustainable Energy Ireland a wink and a nod at the start of the year while acknowledging that it is underfunded by 50%. We are talking about giving €16.2 million in addition to capital spending of €31 million.

Did the Government and the Department give SEI permission to spend money that it did not have or was SEI spending money based on the promise of this Supplementary Estimate? If so, did the Minister and the Department know where the extra €16 million would come from? If they knew, why did they allocate money to other sections in the Department when they knew they would take it away at the end of the year? This applies particularly to the €10 million that I will refer to shortly.

The €31 million revised capital allocation is now exhausted. The brief states: "more money is needed to deliver on SEI's capital programmes if we are to avoid severe consequences". What does this mean? Reading between the lines it means the money has already been spent so there will be severe consequences if we cannot meet these obligations. The projected shortfall is €16.2 million and this is not a small amount of money — it is more than 50% of the total allocation given at the start of the year.

The past two or three weeks in the Dáil have seen so-called health cuts or more accurately a refusal to give the Health Service Executive an allocation of money to allow it to provide basic health services.

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