Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the Deputies who have contributed to the debate. There is broad support for this Bill, which is an important one in the annual budgetary calendar to ensure there is proper legal underpinning of expenditure in the current year. It is also important in ensuring there is legal provision for expenditure to continue next year until the relevant Oireachtas committees consider the Estimates and then for this House to vote on those Estimates.

A range of issues have been raised by colleagues. Deputy Mairéad Farrell raised the process of public procurement and made some suggestions in that regard. Deputy Nash spoke about the need to improve parliamentary involvement in the budgetary process. I would make the case that we have strengthened the role of Parliament in the budgetary process in recent years. He referenced the Parliamentary Budget Office and the role of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, and I have made ourselves available on every occasion we have been asked to discuss and account for our work in that regard. He also raised the temporary business energy support scheme, TBESS, and I confirm to him it will be backdated to 1 September. Deputy Shortall raised the issue of the cost of living and said the Government described the budget as a giveaway budget. We made no such description. We described it a cost-of-living budget and that is a fair description of the totality of the measures we announced on budget day in that respect.

There has been considerable commentary about capital expenditure over the course of the evening and the context of that is important. We have a large public capital programme in Ireland that has increased dramatically in recent years. It has been a conscious policy decision of Government to catch up with the European average in the public capital investment programme and then to exceed it. The fact that next year we will have about €12.5 billion speaks to the level of priority we have afforded capital investment. Having multi-annual ceilings in place and having a total envelope out to 2030 allows Departments to plan the pipeline of public capital projects over that period. Critically, it also gives industry certainty that the Government will continue to invest in housing, healthcare, transport, climate action measures and so on.

On the carryover, I would make the point that the importance of the carryover provision is demonstrated by the fact that, of the almost €820 million that was carried forward from 2021 into 2022, some €780 million had been spent up to the end of November.

Where money is carried forward under the Finance Act 2004, that money is not lost but remains with the Department for spending on projects that may have been delayed in the previous year for a variety of reasons. It further strengthens the public capital envelope we have for the next year. We must always try to strike the right balance between having a robust public spending code whereby we can stand over from a value-for-money perspective investment in public capital projects and ensuring the projects get done in a timely manner. Trying to find that balance is critically important.

The measures we brought forward in the current year in respect of the cost-of-living amount to in the region of €4 billion to provide assistance with rising prices. We have made provision during the year to look after the people who have come here from the terrible war in Ukraine. The cost is expected to be in the region of €1 billion for 2022 and more than half of this amount has been provided to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth - mainly for accommodation supports. Approximately one third has been provided has been provided to the Department of Social Protection to provide social welfare supports.

We also had to make provision during the year to deal with Covid-19. We had the Omicron wave in the early part of this year. That necessitated significant public expenditure in healthcare to make sure we were in a position to respond to what was a huge challenge. Approximately €4.75 billion was provided for measures to support the delivery of key public services and to provide support for sectors that continued to be impacted by the pandemic this year in healthcare, income and employment support schemes that were extended in the early part of the year and continued supports in the education and transport sectors to ensure they could continue to function. We extended supports for tourism and hospitality over the course of the year.

Social protection always remains an important part of public expenditure. When expenditure on the Social Insurance Fund is included, 2022 gross expenditure for social protection is almost €25 billion. People will always make the case in this House for greater spending on social protection but we can be proud of the safety net in this country, which we have strengthened in the recent budget for people on low incomes and many people who are vulnerable to make sure that at least their basic needs can be looked after.

The Department of Health, which had such a crucial role in our response to the pandemic and in reforming our health system, had a gross allocation of €23.6 billion in 2022. Health spending amounts for some 26% of gross voted expenditure and is an important part of public expenditure.

We spent a number of hours earlier discussing housing. In total, the amount allocated to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage was almost €6 billion in 2022. That level of resourcing does reflect the priority the Government has placed on tackling the housing crisis in all its forms.

Expenditure on education at just over €14 billion in 2022 between the Departments of Education, and Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science accounts for almost 16% of gross voted expenditure over that period.

I have dealt with the issue of capital investment. Again, I reference the fact that we introduced important changes earlier this year relating to an inflation co-operation framework to ensure that public works contracts remain a viable proposition for contractors, who were having to take on all the risk of committing to fixed-price work at a time when there was such upward volatility in terms of materials costs over that period. That has brought an important level of stability to public works contracts and has resulted in a greater level of uptake in respect of public works contracts that have been put out for public procurement.

I very much welcome the support of the House that I think will be forthcoming shortly in respect of this Bill. While it may be described as an important piece of housekeeping, it is very important for the House to properly account for expenditure this year to ensure it is legally sound and robust and to ensure that payments and expenditure can continue in the early part of next year before all the various Estimates, which will be set out in the Revised Estimates Volume, are considered by the respective Oireachtas committees and then by this House.

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