Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to contribute to this debate on the Supplementary Estimates, which are additional record Supplementary Estimates from the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin. His Department was set up to reform public expenditure but the only reform he has achieved was to ensure no adequate budgeting at the beginning of each year. In the last fortnight of every year since taking office, he comes into the Chamber to seek an ever-increasing Supplementary Estimate to back up the flawed Estimate announced in the Budget Statement.

The Supplementary Estimates are really being introduced because of the content of the Budget Statement of 12 months ago. That statement was one of the clearest examples in five years of the total capitulation of the Labour Party to Fine Gael. The budget could have been summarised in one sentence: if one was on over €70,000, one got a tax cut and was better off. The choices made in the budget 12 months ago for 2015 meant that there were tax cuts for the high-income earners. That was done at the expense of people who needed serious support, such as the critically ill and those requiring suicide prevention measures, as recently mentioned by Deputy Derek Keating. I refer also to career guidance teachers in schools and homeless people.

We had a big debate on homelessness and the housing crisis around the time the Estimates were going through last year. The Labour Party lost that debate because there had to be a 1% income tax cut for the top earners. However, as the year progressed we were very fortunate that Ireland received a bonanza increase in corporation tax revenue from the foreign multinationals. Without it we could not have addressed some of the aforementioned matters in the last couple of months in the year. We have to thank the companies that chose to act as they did for a reason utterly unknown to the Minister for Finance or anybody else in the Government. While we have the additional revenue, the problem is that the Minister is not only increasing expenditure for this year but also for next year by the same amount as in these Supplementary Estimates. He will build on that. Although the Government has criticised previous regimes for using the mantra "If we have it we will spend it," it is using that mantra to a scale never envisaged before. It has got the extra money and, since there is an upcoming election, it is saying it will increase expenditure for 2015 and have any amount of money for 2016. It is saying it has it so it will spend it; that is the essence of what is happening. Today is just one little element of the Government's plan to spend the extra €7 billion that is coming our way. Some of this revenue arises from the increase in corporation tax revenue that we cannot explain. The other element is substantially a consequence of the programme the Government inherited and which it operated in full for three years to put the country back on its feet.

The financial position may have improved but I take issue with some of the choices made by the Government in the past year or two. While Supplementary Estimates to provide additional money for Departments are welcome, the Office of Public Works, which comes within the remit of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, has not spent, nor is it projected to spend, all the money allocated to it by the Oireachtas for flood relief last year. Despite nationwide flooding, the Department will probably roll over or return to the Department of Finance capital funding it did not spend this year. At the same time, the Minister is before the House today seeking approval for a Supplementary Estimate. Deputies take the budgetary process seriously. If we agree to allocate the Office of Public Works money to spend on flood relief, we expect the office to do its job in this area. It was the responsibility of the Minister to ensure the money was spent.

Major problems have arisen with the Government's management of this year's expenditure programme. While I welcome additional funding for services, my principal difficulty with the Supplementary Estimates is that the €600 million in additional funding for the Heath Service Executive should have been provided in January 2015. This would have enabled the HSE to plan the provision of health services for the 12 months of this year in an orderly and efficient manner and avoided some of the problems that have occurred in the health service in the past year. Having told the HSE its budget would be restricted and no further allocation would be made this year, hey presto, as we reach December, the Government proposes to provide an additional €600 million to enable the HSE to meet overruns. It has been told to spend this money as quickly as possible before the end of the year. One of the reasons for the crisis in the health service is the lack of proper budgeting. While the Supplementary Estimates are welcome, the funding provided should have been included in the original Vote to allow for proper and planned expenditure during the year as opposed to rushing to spend it in the final fortnight of 2015.

See this speech in context