Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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77. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if he will list the occasions over the past 18 months on which Government Departments have requested additional funds from his Department; the purposes of these requests; which requests were granted; and which were refused. [18661/24]

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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We know that over Christmas the Minister and the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, had a ferocious argument over the health budget. We also know there are significant tensions currently between the Minister's Department and other Departments. Some of these tensions concern overspends by those other Departments. Can the Minister give us information about where these difficulties arise, where the overspends are happening and which Departments are engaging the Minister?

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Vote allocations are decided as part of the Estimates process each year. Following publication of the summer economic statement, the Secretary General of my Department writes to all other Departments requesting proposals for the upcoming budget, including where they consider additional funding to be required. These requests are then assessed as part of preparations for the budget.

Managing expenditure within the allocations included in the Revised Estimates Volume, REV, for public services is voted on by the Dáil and is a key responsibility of every Department and Minister. My Department is in regular contact with all Departments regarding actual and projected spending, with key data on voted expenditure published every month.

Where a Department has additional expenditure demands over and above the amounts set out in the REV, and where any savings identified are not sufficient to cover the cost of such additional demands within a Vote, a Supplementary Estimate may be required to provide the additional funds.

Over the course of 2023, additional resources of €5.5 billion, in net terms, were agreed by Government and approved by the Dáil by way of Supplementary Estimates.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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Two Departments seem to be under significant pressure at the moment, namely, the Departments of Justice and Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. They are under strain with the current issue of the migrant numbers coming into the country. There was an important story in yesterday's edition of the Irish Daily Mail in regard to two asylum seekers who were successful in court in arguing that they should not be returned to Britain on the grounds that Britain would send them to Rwanda. One of these asylum seekers had a conviction for sexual offences in Britain six years ago. The International Protection Office was informed of it but the applicant was never told to register as a sex offender here. Why a criminal would have to register for a crime himself is unknown. The Garda should be involved in that in my view. However, he was never placed on the sex offenders register because the Department of Justice, although being aware of it, never informed him. Is this due to incompetence within the Department of Justice? Does the Department of Justice have a sufficient budget to ensure it makes such serious decisions and informs the public of these serious issues?

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The Department of Justice is very well funded but of course always makes the case for more funding to respond back to the many pressures and challenges it has to contend with. The Department of Justice and An Garda Síochána take extremely seriously and I believe, manage in a very responsible way, the issues of how we keep our communities safe and in particular any threats that may be posed by those who have committed crimes of a sexual nature in the past. It is important to say that at the moment we face many different challenges in terms of the scale of people who are seeking asylum within our country and the responsibility that we have to manage those applications impartially, fairly and also speedily. It is because of this that additional funding has been made available to the Department of Justice to assist in the processing of applications and to do so in a way that is fair to those who deserve and are legally entitled to asylum and refuge in our country and then to deal speedily with those who are not.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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The judge in this case, Ms Justice Siobhán Phelan, stated that the information in regard to the applicant's conviction has been in the Minister for Justice agent's possession since October 2021, without telling the applicant of his obligation to register as a sex offender. The judge went on to say that she was troubled by the fact that this has not come to light. She said this was in the public interest.

Here we have a judge who is saying that the Department of Justice is not doing its job in keeping people safe and that an individual who is a sex offender was not told the relevant information. This is incredibly serious. I understand that my question relates to funding. However, this is just one of the issues that highlights the problems being experienced by Departments. The issue is whether this is an issue of incompetence or is it a question of funding. It is important that we get down to that because the Minister and I have a responsibility to make sure Departments work in the public interest. We have to be able to identify, when that work breaks down, whether it is due to incompetence, the lack of accountability or the lack of funding.

Here we have an individual who was found guilty of a shocking crime. The Department had the information for two years yet did not inform An Garda Síochána. The two arms of the Department of Justice therefore did not work with each other. A judge made very serious comments in regard to the Minister for Justice's work in this regard.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The Department of Justice absolutely treats all such issues with the seriousness they deserve, supports An Garda Síochána in its work in keeping those in our country safe and dealing with those who may have committed crimes in the past, particularly as I said, those of a sexual nature. The Department of Justice understandably will continue to make the case for additional funding. However, if the Deputy looks at the funding it has received in recent years, there have been very significant increases in its budget. In turn, we made the funding available to those parts of the Department of Justice and its agencies that have to deal with the impact of so many people coming to our country seeking refuge.

I will continue to treat the funding needs that the Department raises with me in the budgetary process with the seriousness that they deserve.