David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Appropriation Bill 2019 provides authorisation in law for all of the expenditure that has been undertaken in 2019 on the basis of the Estimates voted on by the Dáil in the course of the year. Section 1 and Schedule 1 outline the amounts to be appropriated for supply services. These are for amounts given in the Revised Estimates for this year and the Supplementary Estimates which were considered last week. In total, these Estimates amount to approximately €55 billion.

Without rehearsing the arguments made last week, I note that the Supplementary Estimate provided for the health service has become an annual tradition. It is the result of underfunding at the beginning of the year, only to be plugged by unsustainable corporate tax receipts at the end of the year. As has been made clear by the Parliamentary Budget Office, the Government is failing abjectly to convert additional funding into better outcomes for patients by pursuing the false economy of a recruitment freeze that inhibits the opening of more beds and inadequate home help hours that result in patients taking up hospital beds when they could otherwise be discharged. I suspect we will be in the same position next year if our public services continue to be run as they have been since 2016, and prior to that.

The other purpose of the Appropriation Bill is to provide a legal basis for spending to continue into 2020 before the Dáil Votes on the 2020 Estimates. If this Bill was not passed before the end of this year, there would be no authority to spend in 2020 from the beginning of the year until the 2020 Estimates are approved. Departments may carry over unspent capital resources from a given year to the following year up to a maximum of 10%, given the flexibility required to deliver capital projects. The Appropriation Act determines how much can be carried over.

Sinn Féin will not object to the passing of this Bill. It is a necessary piece of housekeeping that must be undertaken before the end of the year. We may disagree with Government and its partners in government about how resources are spent and directed and the policy that underpins that spending but given the reasons for this Bill, we will be facilitating its passage.

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