As I said earlier, capital expenditure is at an all-time high in the history of the State, with a commitment to maintaining and further increasing this over the lifetime of the Government. The overall level of capital expenditure in 2021 stands at almost €11 billion when capital carry-over is included. Efficient public capital investment means quality investment decisions supported by robust evidence and analysis to maximise outcomes from limited public resources. This is not a static space and public bodies are co…

Certainly, we need to increase housing supply not only from the State but from the private sector. As the Deputy is aware, a range of domestic bodies and commentators have pointed to the need for output of somewhere between 30,000 and 35,000 units per annum. Pre-Covid, the figure had increased to a little over 20,000. We are still a long way short of where we need to be. The State will play its part in the delivery of housing - make no mistake about that. We are also going to play our part in supporting the private…

The Deputy raised the question of affordability in the area of housing. The Government is now putting in place an affordable housing scheme. Until now, such a scheme did not exist. Through the co-operation of the House, hopefully, we are enacting legislation that will provide an affordable housing scheme in this country that will be of benefit to thousands of individuals and couples who want to buy their first homes. In addition we are starting the delivery of cost rental homes with units coming on stream later thi…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 105 and 112 together. I thank Deputies Lawless and Mairéad Farrell for their questions. It is proposed to develop a new Government data centre. This will be a purpose-built facility on State land and will be operated and managed by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on behalf of the State. The new Government data centre will be developed at the Government’s Backweston laboratory campus in Celbridge, County Kildare, with which Deputy Lawless will be familiar. This cam…

I thank the Deputies very much. By way of further background, this facility is initially designed to accommodate 600 racks. The project is initially intended to replace four of the State's most essential data centres, which are operated by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the Revenue Commissioners, the Department of Social Protection and An Garda Síochána, with one purpose-built data centre facility owned and operated by the Government. It is intended to then make the facility available to organi…

I thank the Deputies for their questions. As I stated, the data centre is designed to be at least twice as efficient as most existing data centre facilities. That is an important point to underline. In conjunction with that, a sustainable energy project is being pursued by the Office of Public Works, OPW, on the site. I very much welcome that and will ensure it proceeds as part of the plan. The OPW has signed a contract with the ESB for the additional power connectivity required to ensure power reliability for the …

I thank Deputy Ó Cuív and I acknowledge Deputy Brendan Smith, who spoke to me about this issue yesterday evening. As reported in the Fiscal Monitor, net capital issues to the end of May 2021 amounted to €1.885 billion. This is €408 million, or 17.8%, behind the end-of-May profile of €2.293 billion. Expenditure for the same period in 2020 totalled €2.121 billion. In year-on-year terms, expenditure is €236 million, or just over 11%, below the end of May 2020 position. The main underspends are the Department of Transp…

It is undoubtedly the case that the restrictions on construction in particular in the early part of the year have had an impact. I have not had requests to date for the transfer of funding but I would be favourably disposed to same, depending on the specific ask.

I thank the Deputy. That is the specific issue Deputy Brendan Smith raised with me and intended to address this morning through this oral question. It is very much a matter for the Minister for Transport to manage his capital budget. Deputy Ó Cuív has correctly pointed out that there is a very significant underspend in the year to date. The feedback we are getting in my Department is that the Department of Transport expects to bring spending in line with profile. To answer the Deputy's question directly, if it is t…

The Deputy makes a number of valid points. For the record of the House, the actual overall underspend last year was more than €900 million. There is a restriction on the amount that can be carried forward, which is 10% of the capital allocation within the relevant Vote. This meant the amount carried forward into 2021 was more than €700 million. The Deputy is correct that Departments will guard their capital allocations very closely. In recent months, we have put in place new requirements for reporting directly to C…

I thank Deputy Bruton for his question. An Taoiseach and I launched Civil Service Renewal 2030, a new ten-year strategy for the Civil Service, on 21 May last. In addition to publishing the strategy, the launch provided an opportunity to highlight a number of projects undertaken across the Civil Service that show the important work carried out by civil servants up and down the country, particularly in responding to the challenges we have faced over the past 18 months. The strategy provides an ambitious framework for…

This is an area on which we must continue to focus. When it comes to innovation, we have an annual award scheme for innovative projects across the Civil Service. I intend to continue to develop that scheme because it is important that we reward excellence and encourage and support innovation in all its forms. It is a very important scheme, which recognises achievement in the area of innovation. It can help to improve services for our citizens, which is ultimately what we are all about. There is significant investme…

First, in regard to the capital carry-over restriction, any change in that provision would certainly require a change in legislation and may require a constitutional change. From discussion with my officials on this issue in recent months, it is not a straightforward matter. It is something I will examine further. It has implications, of course, for overall expenditure control and management because, from a public expenditure point of view, the more multi-annual dimensions we have to our public expenditure framewor…

I thank Deputy Lahart for raising the question on behalf of our colleague, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan. The Revised Estimates for Public Services 2021 outlined an overall Government expenditure ceiling of €87.8 billion. This provided for both an increase in the core expenditure allocations to Departments and for almost €12 billion in funding to respond to Covid-19 and Brexit. In 2021 to date, Covid-19 has continued to pose a huge challenge for society and continued measures have been necessary to support our people, bus…

It is important that we look at the overall context. As I stated, the expenditure ceiling for 2021, as agreed in the Revised Estimates Volume published late last year, is just under €88 billion. However, it is expected that this level of expenditure will be exceeded over the course of 2021. For example, in respect of Covid-related costs, we had made provision for around €12 billion of expenditure, given the length of the restrictions that were imposed in the early part of the year. The decisions made in the nationa…

It is important to bear in mind that we are working from information based on five months of the year. When it comes to managing expenditure, Departments will have expenditure pressures at different points in the year. The spending is not always evenly spread throughout the year. At this point in time, our expectation is that most Departments will be in a position to spend their full allocation on the policies the Government wishes to have pursued. When it comes to capital expenditure, there will be pressure becaus…

The total level of Exchequer investment is currently under consideration as part of the ongoing review of the NDP, as the Deputy is aware. The overall level of capital expenditure in 2021 stands at €10.1 billion, or almost €11 billion when capital carry-over is included. This represents a share of 4.7% of GNI*, well above the EU average in recent years of around 3% of GDP. This allocation is almost €5.5 billion or 119% higher than the amount allocated in 2017. In other words, capital allocations have already more t…

As the Deputy said, fiscal rules are being reviewed. They have been suspended at the current time in the European Union. However, that will not last indefinitely. We may well see a different framework of fiscal rules emerging from the crisis. There is scope to account for capital in a different way, given its importance to our economy. It is important to underline the context that capital expenditure, at almost €11 billion this year, has increased significantly. Four years ago, it was approximately €5 billion. We f…

I agree with the broad thrust of what the Deputy has said. The dial has shifted and continues to shift in the sense that the Government is genuinely committed to an ambitious public capital investment programme. However, we cannot ignore the reality of the scale of the national debt and debt per capita , which is high in the developed world. We are in an environment of historically low interest rates because of the exceptional interventions of the European Central Bank. Those interventions will not continue indefin…

I recall our discussions on this and related topics during our work on the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. Beginning with a pilot programme introduced for the 2018 budgetary cycle, equality budgeting is a way of approaching and understanding the budget as a process that embodies long-standing societal choices about how resources are used, rather than simply a neutral process of resource allocation. In practice, this means that equality budgeting attempts to provide greater information on how proposed or ongoing b…