Written answers

Thursday, 17 January 2019

Department of Rural and Community Development

Departmental Funding

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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240. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the amount expended in 2018 to LAGs, county councils and other bodies for work not completed to date or for which no receipts or claims have been received for the work, by organisation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2157/19]

Photo of Michael RingMichael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware, the preparation of the 2018 Appropriation Account for my Department has just commenced. A provisional appropriation account will be submitted to the Comptroller and Auditor General by the 31stMarch 2018.

The prepayments made by the Department in 2018 are compiled as part of this work and the information will therefore be available, on a provisional basis, at the end of March 2019. The final audited account will then be published in September 2019. Prepayments have been made in a limited number of instances and in line with sanction from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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241. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the amount of prepayments made in 2016 to local authorities for work which has not been carried out to date; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2158/19]

Photo of Michael RingMichael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware, my Department was not established until July 2017. That said, there were some pre-existing programmes, including a number of Rural Schemes, which my Department now has responsibility for, some of which are listed in the following table.

In 2016, pre-funding of approximately €28 million was released to the Local Authorities in respect of four Rural Schemes, see the following table.

On 13 September 2018 I wrote to each Local Authority advising them that all of the 2016 projects were to be completed and closed off by the end of September 2018 and that any unspent monies were to be returned to my Department. As of 30 September 2018, there was a reported spend of €26.6m on these schemes. This equates to 94% of the allocated funding. I advised the Local Authorities that any outstanding costs required to complete the projects would have to be met from within their own resources.

Funding allocated to Local Authorities under Rural Schemes in 2016

SchemeFunding AmountFunding spent by 30 Sept 2018% spent by 30 Sept 2018
REDZ€6,142,842€5,668,63392%
Town and Village€9,880,000€9,599,12397%
CLÁR€8,238,867€7,882,77996%
Rural Recreation Scheme€4,130,154€3,469,45684%
Overall €28,391,863€26,619,99194%

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