Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I understand this has been in every Finance Bill since the establishment of the State and that it is standard procedure. It was introduced to establish the capital services account, also known as a sinking fund. This was established on foot of a decision that borrowings for voted capital services should be amortised over a period of 30 years so that they would involve no permanent addition to the public debt. Each year a new annuity is calculated designed to provide an annual sum which, when accumulated over 30 years, will amortise the expected borrowing in respect of expenditure on voted capital services for that year.

Section 153 provides for the annuity to be charged on the Central Fund in 2010 and for the following 29 years to cover the projected borrowing from voted capital services this year. It has also been the practice to adjust the annuity in the previous year's Finance Bill to take account of the actual outturn for the borrowing requirement in respect of voted capital services in the previous year. The Finance Bill 2009 provided for an annuity of €403,709,206 and this has been amended to €350,635,638 to take account of the actual 2009 outturn. It is a standard procedure with every Finance Bill.