Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When an answer starts saying what a Department does and all I and the public knows, I know somebody is trying to obfuscate the answer. I have had to resort to putting in freedom of information, FOI, requests to get basic financial information available to the Department made available to me as an Opposition Deputy. I will continue to put in FOI requests to get this information until the Department starts providing it in replies to parliamentary questions.

To give the Minister her own information back, according to the Exchequer returns at the end of February, published by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, €8 million was spent on capital in the gross voted expenditure against a profile of €10 million, which was unnaturally low. This meant the Department was 16% behind where it should have been.

I asked the Department in another parliamentary question what had happened with the carryover. I was told there was not even an order made to allow for any expenditure on that after two months. As well as that, I asked about the local authority spend for work not done and I was told nothing had happened on that either. Will the Minister start coming up with the figures and answering questions with them? I cannot understand why her Department is so shy about the figures, except for the fact that it is not spending the moneys.

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