Johnny Guirke (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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719. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the amount of allocated local government funding that was spent in each local authority area per capita of its population in tabular form. [40606/21]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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The funding system that applies to local authorities is a complex one, as authorities derive their income from a variety of local sources including commercial rates, charges for goods and services and funding from Central Government.

Central Government funding of local authorities similarly presents a complex picture, with transfers, both current and capital, coming from a wide range of Departments and Offices, not solely from my Department, for a variety of purposes. Some streams of funding are delivered directly from funding departments to local authorities, while others are routed through departmental agencies.

Most of the funding sourced from Central Government and provided to local authorities must be used for specified services. These can be grouped into 5 broad programme categories: recreational, education, environment, housing and transport

Local authorities vary significantly from one another in terms of size, population, population distribution, public service demands, infrastructure and other income sources including commercial rates - all factors which should be taken into account when comparing levels of funding in different local authority areas.

Additional detail on Central Government funding of local authorities is provided in the Comptroller and Auditor General's Annual Report, accessible at the following link:

www.audit.gov.ie/en/Find-Report/Publications/2020/2019-Annual-Report-Chapter-2-Central-government-funding-of-local-authorities.pdf

The attached sheet details the total 2020 expenditure from my department only and the results of the 2016 census.

Johnny Guirke (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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720. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of capital investment projects that were undertaken by each local authority in each of the years 2016 to 2020 and to date in 2021, in tabular form. [40607/21]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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My Department has a wide and diverse business agenda, covering a broad range of functions, including local authority housing, voluntary housing, estate regeneration, energy efficiency retrofitting, housing grants, rural water schemes, urban regeneration, peatlands conservation and restoration, national parks & wildlife services and fire services. In order to achieve its business objectives, the Department provides significant resources to an extensive range of organisations, including local authorities, dedicated agencies, and other bodies; some allocations, depending on the programmes concerned, are made on a national or other non-county basis. In these circumstances, the information requested is not readily available in my Department and its compilation would involve a disproportionate amount of time and work.

However, as regards contracts for which local authorities are responsible, information on expenditure and multi-annual capital commitments is set out in the Department's Appropriation Accounts (Vote 34) for the relevant years which are published by the Comptroller and Auditor General and are available at www.audit.gov.ie/en/publications/. The Department's 2020 Appropriation Account will be published later this year.

In relation to water services projects, Irish Water has established a team to deal with queries from Oireachtas members on issues arising in relation to Irish Water's activities. The team may be contacted via email to oireachtasmembers@water.ie Alternatively Irish Water provides full details of their projects and plans to improve water and wastewater services on their website. The details can be accessed at the following link: www.water.ie/projects-plans/.