Written answers

Tuesday, 24 April 2018

Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport

Public Transport Expenditure

Photo of Robert TroyRobert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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491. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if multi-annual budgets for public transport service providers will be introduced in order that companies can better plan (details supplied). [17513/18]

Photo of Shane RossShane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent)
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For some years now, Exchequer capital expenditure has been budgeted on a multi-annual basis through a series of 5-year capital envelopes.  This has helped to improve the management of capital expenditure and reflects some of capital's particular attributes, including the one-off, non-repetitive nature of most capital spending and the fact that, at an overall level, capital accounts for less than a tenth of the total Voted spending by Departments.

By contrast, current expenditure accounts for the vast bulk of Voted spending, and it is budgeted by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform on an annual basis as part of the annual Estimates process, with indicative future year allocations at Vote level specified for the following 2 years.

The Public Service Obligation (PSO) funding to transport operators for providing subvented public transport (i.e. bus and rail) services is paid by the National Transport Authority from the current expenditure monies that are made available to the Department's Vote annually as part of the Estimates process.  Decisions on the PSO allocations to particular operators are made annually by the NTA having regard to the Authority's statutory role and the PSO contracts that it has in place with each of the individual providers.

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