Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 163: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the value of the social insurance fund in each of the past five years and to date in 2008; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15885/08]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The Social Insurance Fund derives its income mainly from pay-related social insurance contributions from both employers and employees. It provides insured contributors with both long-term pension benefits and short-term benefits such as unemployment and disability payments. The table outlines the Social Insurance Fund receipts, expenditure, annual surplus and cumulative surplus for each year since 2003. The figures for 2007 are provisional.

From 1st of January 2008 to the 29th of February 2008 receipts amounted to €1,480m and expenditure from the fund was in the order of €1,350m. This increasing cumulative surplus in the fund is the continuation of a trend which commenced in 1997 when a surplus arose for the first time since the fund was established in 1953. In the previous forty-four years of the existence of the fund, there was a shortfall between the amount of income received into the fund and the amount of expenditure paid out of it, which was made up by way of an Exchequer subvention in each year, as provided for under the Social Welfare Acts. The Acts also provide for the investment of the amount of the surplus arising in the fund. The investment account of the fund is managed by the National Treasury Management Agency, subject to guidelines issued by the Minister for Finance.