Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not accept that. The budget was agreed by this House and the Government in October. The Government did not know the full cost of the overrun, or how it would be profiled, until November and we did not decide what change we would make until the Cabinet meeting this week. The Revised Estimates were done in December. The budget was in October, the extent of the overrun was known in November, the Revised Estimates were done in December and a decision on the reallocation was not made until January. That is the timeline.

Deputy Howlin was Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform for five years. I worked with him during that period on many capital projects, particularly in the area of transport. The Deputy knows that, during the course of every year, there was virement. That is not a Revised Estimate, but being transferred from one capital project to another and one Department to another. That is called virement. I imagine that, if we went back over the record, we would probably find 20 to 30 occasions on which Deputy Howlin, as Minister, signed off on virement, moving money from one Department to another, from current to capital expenditure and from one project to another. It happens throughout the course of the year.

In an overall context, while not diminishing it in any way, the capital budget for this year and the amount of money we will invest in public infrastructure this year is €7.3 billion. That is approximately €140 million per week. We have to find roughly a week's spending, or four and a half days' spending to reallocate within the additional capital spending and that is what we have done.

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