Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if he will provide an analysis of actual infrastructure and capital investment spending by Ministerial Vote Group for the year to date in 2012; and a forecast for the annual outturn for 2012 together with the annual budget for 2012. [41247/12]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The Exchequer returns were published this afternoon and are available on the website of the Department of Finance and via my own Department's website. The total net Exchequer capital spend to end September amounted to €1.7 billion. This represents 47% of the total net capital estimate (€3.6 billion) for the year, which means that €1.9 billion remains to be spent. For the same period last year, capital expenditure of €2.2 billion accounted for 50% of the 2011 net provisional outturn figure of €4.4 billion. Individual Departments are responsible for the projects and programmes in their areas and further details about spending on projects and programmes can be obtained directly from the relevant Departments. Given the uncertainties about precise issues of timing, and given the over-arching requirement to manage both capital and current expenditure within the overall allocations, it is too early at this stage to say what the final capital outturn for 2012 will be for each area.

As the Deputy will be aware, capital spending has general characteristics which influence the allocation drawdown pattern. Expenditure on capital projects typically occurs in large tranches at fixed milestones, unlike current expenditure which is generally continuous throughout the year. Obviously, this affects the phasing and profiling of capital expenditure. In addition, public financial rules require that payments are only made on foot of matured liabilities, so payments made in the later parts of the year are made on foot of work that has already been satisfactorily completed. The trend is therefore that the bulk of capital expenditure takes place in the final quarter of the year.