Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----but I will be clear in regard to it. I will give the House the exact figure. The underlying spending position at the end of October, which are the most recent figures we published, when adjusted for the shortfall on PRSI receipts as I explained at the beginning of the year, was a shortfall of ¤289 million. Social welfare is paid from the social welfare insurance and because social welfare receipts were down, and PRSI receipts are an appropriation-in-aid, they are replaced by a voted sum, therefore, there is no additional expenditure. Instead of paying it through PRSI it is paid through taxation. Most people would believe both PRSI and general taxation are one and the same but it is an accounting issue. A total of ¤289 million of the expenditure on social welfare is explained by that and I will explain that repeatedly for those who want to hear it. The commutative underspend in October is ¤200 million. Net voted expenditure to mid-October was ¤88 million over profile, that is ¤88 million out of the billions of euro we spend, ¤424 million of net current expenditure offset by the ¤336 million underspend on capital. That was the point Senator Byrne was making.

It is my intention to keep as much control as I can on expenditure. There are real pressures. We have real pressure points in the health and social welfare areas. In the education area we have real pressure points in terms of demographic. We have remarkable control of expenditure in a diminishing profile on the basis of the figures I just outlined.

I welcome Senator Byrne back to the Chamber. The Senator said we were rapped on the knuckles by the troika. I assure the Deputy no such thing happened. The leader of the management group from the troika, István Székely from the European Commission, said that he had never worked on a better programme, never dealt with more compliance, never dealt with people in more control than those in Ireland, and that we were a model for that. All 160 very difficult legislative commitments to fiscal management were achieved. That is a simple fact, and we should acknowledge it. None of these are easy, and I commend the Irish people in that regard.

In terms of the underspend on the capital, I am not putting any breaks on the capital expenditure. That is the way it is panning out. Specifically, there is some underspend in the water services division in the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government.

I have asked for that to be accelerated because I want spend on the capital side as it is important. It is not the totality of expenditure on the capital side. To address that issue, Members will recall I announced a stimulus package of ¤2.25 billion earlier this year. We are working towards that, hoping that contracts for the first grouping of schools will be available shortly. We are driving ahead with all these agenda items to augment as best we can the very scarce capital resources we have. I am in direct discussions with the European Investment Bank and private sector investment to supplement and leverage the income we are going to get for the sale of State assets next year.

Senator Byrne and others referred to the Croke Park agreement. In my judgment it is working and I welcome the Senator?s support for it. Last year we had the first growth of gross domestic product in four years. While this year?s growth will be less than the 1.2% expected, probably at 0.8%, we are unique in the European Union in having growth. As an open trading country, we are extraordinarily vulnerable to the economic climate of our trading partners. We hope there will be further growth with the tangible growth now seen in the US market.

If the most egregious failure we have in the reform agenda is the Oireachtas not sitting during the Hallowe'en break, I consider my job well done. My Fine Gael colleague instanced the local government reform package. What I am doing is part of the set while other Ministers have their own reform agendas. The local government reform agenda is a case in point. It is ambitious, ground-breaking and will be good. It will rebalance power between the elected and the administrative in local authorities. The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, has halved the number of vocational education committees and consolidated them. None of these programmes is easy. One point I have noticed since taking office is that we are very resistant to change and we love the status quo. Everyone advocates change for someone else but there is something intrinsically valuable in what we do that cannot be changed.