Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform further to the publication of the Exchequer Statement for January 2013, if he will confirm the total spent on capital projects in the month of January 2013; if he will provide the annual budget for capital expenditure in 2013 and for his assessment of the impact on unemployment if the capital budget were spent evenly throughout the year or front-loaded to the start of the year. [7206/13]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The Exchequer Statement for January 2013 shows that the total net capital spend in January 2013 was €108.3m. The Exchequer Statement also gives a breakdown of capital expenditure in January by Department. My Department does not hold information regarding capital expenditure at project level. Requests for information regarding expenditure on individual projects should be directed to the relevant spending Minister and his/her Departments.

The capital expenditure budget for this year was set in Budget 2013 at €3.4 billion. Details regarding the breakdown of the capital budget by Department can be found in the Expenditure Report published by my Department in December 2012 ( ).

As the Deputy will be aware, how Departments spend their individual capital budgets throughout the year is dependent on what particular projects and programmes they will progress in that year. Expenditure on capital projects typically occurs in large tranches at fixed milestones, unlike current expenditure which is generally continuous throughout the year. In addition, public financial rules require that payments are only made on foot of matured liabilities, so payments are made on foot of work that has already been satisfactorily completed. For these reasons it would not be possible to either have a spread of even payments for projects throughout the year or to “frontload” capital expenditure as payments cannot be made in advance of work being completed.

The profiling of monthly cash drawdown requirements from annual capital allocations is essentially an administrative exercise. For this reason employment and job creation are not factored into the exercise of profiling capital expenditure. However, they are taken into consideration by the Government when setting the annual capital allocations, alongside considerations regarding the overall budgetary position, strategic investment needs and the benefits that will flow from investment.