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

All last year, I asked the then Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, and subsequently the new Department of Rural and Community Development, about the level of underspend in this area. I kept predicting a significant underspend by the end of the year and the Minister and his colleagues kept telling me that this was not going to occur. Despite the Minister's best efforts at the very end of the year - a late run with the local improvement scheme got rid of €17 million, and fair play to the Minister for that - the Department, which has a total budget of approximately €160 million, wound up with an underspend of €19 million. How can the Minister explain and account for such bad mismanagement of the Department's money?

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