Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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323. To ask the Minister for Finance the reason the decision that additional allocation for funding to the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport to enable recovery and repair on the road network in January 2016 was allowed under fiscal rules in view of the fact that it was initially his Department's position that such a request for additional funding arising from storm damage could not be catered for under the fiscal rules (details supplied). [28641/17]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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In terms of the performance public expenditure management in 2016, it should be noted that the provisional outturn (adjusting for Capital Carryover) for total gross voted expenditure was €55,980 million compared to the projection in REV 2016. This represents an over profile amount of less than 0.25% of total gross voted expenditure, highlighting the strict control of the overall level of public expenditure in the course of 2016.

Within this a number of additional current and capital expenditure priorities were met. As the Deputy mentions, these included a larger capital allocation for road repairs in response to flooding damage at the beginning of 2016. This had been previously highlighted in both the Summer Economic Statement and Mid-Year Expenditure Report, and could be accommodated with the fiscal rules. This follows technical revisions to the 2015 expenditure base by Eurostat in relation to the statistical treatment of an AIB-related share transaction. This in turn provided an additional buffer for the calculation of Ireland’s compliance with the expenditure benchmark last year.

Eurostat's decision to classify the AIB transaction as expenditure was only taken in April 2016 during the clarification process on the end-March 2016 Maastricht Returns.