Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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552. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the unallocated spend within his Department for 2017; the expenditure allocated to programmes in 2017 which are due to cease in 2017; the total funds that will become available within his Department's expenditure profile in 2018 due to changes in demand for goods and services and or changes to costs within his Department and so on; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32227/17]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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The gross vote of the Department in 2017 amounts to €1,490m, comprising €1,230m in current expenditure and €260m in capital expenditure including a carry-over of €21.7 million capital from the 2016 allocation. This total allocation is based on requirements to meet existing and new commitments and liabilities in relation to programmes, schemes and services managed by my Department, and, as such, there is no unallocated spend within the vote. The detailed allocations are set out in the Revised Estimates Volume (REV) 2017.

The programmes and schemes to which funding has been allocated in 2017, for example schemes within the Rural Development Programme, the Seafood Development Programme and the Forestry Programme, are multi-annual in their nature and are not due to cease in 2017.

The discussions on the 2018 Estimate are under way in my Department and all budget lines in the vote, both current and capital are being examined as part of that process. My intention is to ensure that all resources available to my Department will be managed to advance Government priorities and to provide the optimum benefit to economic activity in the agricultural, food, fisheries and forestry sectors, including farm incomes, and to realising the potential which clearly exists for the sectors to continue to contribute to the national economic recovery.