Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he will provide a breakdown of the the €150 million of capital funding spent by his Department during December; the reason 30% of his Department’s overall capital spend was held until December; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5139/13]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department’s Exchequer allocation supports the transition to an economy based on exports, enterprise and innovation through Capital funding to its Agencies and Programmes such as IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, the County Enterprise Boards, Shannon Development, InterTrade Ireland, INTERREG, the National Standards Authority of Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) and the Temporary Partial Credit Guarantee Scheme.

My Department adopts a very careful and prudent approach in relation to the spending of taxpayers' money and disburses monies in line with the drawdown requirements of the various Agencies and Programmes. In this regard, the Programmes supported through Capital expenditure are generally demand-led and, as a result, the pattern of disbursement is essentially determined accordingly. By the end of December 2012, €482 million in Capital was expended from my Department’s overall Capital allocation of €514m to fund the on-going enterprise support activities of the various Bodies mentioned above. In addition, an amount of €25 million of Capital was carried over into the Department's 2013 Capital allocation in line with the provisions of the Government's Multi Annual Expenditure Framework.

This Framework and budgetary approach enables Departments to manage Capital Budgets on a multi -annual basis and facilitates the Department in managing the challenges associated with the demand-led nature of grant payments and issues relating to the timing of expenditure and ensures that the Capital allocation is utilised to maximum effect.

The Provisional Outturn figures for 2012, on an individual Agency and Programme basis, are currently being finalised for publication as part of the Revised Estimate Volume for 2013.