Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the good work the Minister of State is doing on the issue, particularly in the establishment of the expert group. However, I am increasingly concerned by the underspend year on year. I received the reply to a parliamentary question last night which gave us the breakdown for last year by local authority. Not only was there a 48% underspend across the State, ten local authorities did not spend anything at all, 14 significantly underspent, while only six either spent their full allocation or overspent. That is not good enough. I hope the Minister of State is not suggesting he is waiting for the expert group to make its findings to enable him to work out how to deal with the issue. This is the second year in a row in which just about half of the budget has not been spent. What did the Minister of State do last year with the local authorities to fix the underspend in the year before and last year? Whatever the expert group recommends in its report, to which we are looking forward, it will not have any impact until 2020. What is the Minister of State going to do differently this year to ensure we will not be here in 12 months' time discussing a significant underspend?

See this speech in context