Vol. 357 No. 11
I move:
That the Revised Estimates for Public Services for the year 1985 which were presented to the Dáil and circulated to members on 23 April 1985 be deemed to be the Estimates for the year 1985 for the purposes of Standing Order 122 of the Standing Orders relative to Public Business.
The Minister for Finance has moved to authorise the bringing before the Dáil of the revised Book of Estimates for 1985. This is the first opportunity which we on this side of the House have had of commenting on the revised Book of Estimates. The procedure followed in this regard this year has been quite unusual. Deputies will recall that there were at least three very dubious figures included in the budgetary arithmetic. There was an amount of £28.6 million provided for cuts in expenditure on the Estimates as originally put forward, there was a nice neat round amount of £30 million provided for staff savings and an amount of £50 million provided for buoyancy of revenue.
In each of these three cases grave doubt arises about the validity of the figures and their insertion into the budgetary arithmetic. We were not given any details on these figures at budget time. We were denied any access to the details of the £28.6 million supposed cuts in expenditure and the £30 million savings on the staff side. We are now told that these two figures have been incorporated into this revised Book of Estimates before us. The Minister for Finance, as a matter of courtesy to the House and as a matter of good parliamentary practice, should have provided us with an itemised list how this important figure of £58.6 million was made up, that is, the £30 million staff savings and the £28.6 million on general expenditure cuts. We sought in going through the Book of Estimates to identify where these savings will be made. On the staff side we put together a list of what seems to us to be the manner in which the £30 million savings will be achieved. There are some quite extraordinary proposals in the make-up of that £30 million. I hope the Minister, when he comes to reply, will give us firm and detailed information about that £30 million and the £28.6 million.
As far as we can make out on this side of the House the £30 million saving would involve a saving of £3.7 million on the Garda Síochána. It appears that there would be a £3.7 million reduction in the Estimate for the Garda Síochána although the crime situation is the way it is. As far as we can establish, £2.5 million of that figure will be made up by a reduction in Garda pay. For the life of me I cannot see how it is proposed to achieve that saving in Garda pay this year. As far as one can make out there is also a saving of £1.4 million on pay to prison staff. There is another extraordinary item which would seem to indicate that there will be a saving of £3.3 million on the Office of the Revenue Commissioners. It is difficult to know how that is to be achieved. Any information we have about the position is that the Revenue Commissioners are under very severe pressure and that the revenue collection machinery is creaking. How is it possible that the staff could be reduced to the extent of achieving a saving of £3.3 million? The entire £3.3 million may not be attributable to staff. In fact, as far as we can gather the saving proposed for staff is £1.5 million. The House would be expecting that additional staff would be provided for the Revenue Commissioners to catch up with all the arrears we hear so much about.
There is a very dubious item elsewhere, a saving of £1.5 million attributed to a post office saving. Are they not going to pay their bills to An Post or An Bord Telecom? There is another £1.8 million purported to be saved on the Office of Public Works; again £200,000 of a post office saving. There is a saving in the Statistics Office of £500,000. Those figures are ones we have been able to deduce from the revised Book of Estimates which is now before us. There is a saving of £7.5 million under the heading of Defence, £3.5 million being attributable to aircraft which, perhaps, can be explained but where the rest will be made up is far from clear.
Apparently £5 million will be saved under the heading of Health Estimate. It is described as a reduction of £5 million in payments to health agencies in respect of balance of grants for years prior to 1985. My proposition to the House is that these purported savings are totally unreal. Some of them may be valid enough, they may be well based but, in general, they do not seem to be a reasonable proposition in so far as the different Departments to which they are attributed are concerned.
There is also the question of what exactly is happening with the £7 million in regard to youth employment levy expenditure. I should like to ask the Minister to clear that up. There was some sleight of hand indulged in in that regard. There is a statement to the effect that savings will be achieved by substituting £7 million of Exchequer funds on Education, the post-primary Vote, by youth employment levy funds. The statement goes on to say that there will be no reduction in the level of post-primary activities. A saving of £7 million must come from somewhere. If it is not to come from post-primary education then it will come from the youth employment schemes. The whole position in regard to these savings is very obscure indeed. I am asking the Minister to give us clear, specific, itemised details of how these amounts are made up because they are of crucial significance to the public finances this year.
I do not believe that the £50 million buoyancy of revenue is now a possibility at all. The Minister knows that in fact there was a serious falling off in the early part of the year in VAT and income tax. It is almost impossible to visualise a substantial sum of £50 million arising this year in the form of revenue buoyancy when, in fact, the returns of income tax and VAT have fallen off so seriously. That £50 million is not likely to materialise and if one adds to that figure the two figures I mentioned, the £28.6 million and £30 million cuts in expenditure, one gets a total of £108 million shortfall in the receipts on the revenue side of the budgetary arithmetic.
The House is entitled to know the status or the validity of these cuts, £30 million on staff and £28.6 million on general expenditure headings. If they are not to materialise or be achieved there is no doubt that the whole budgetary arithmetic will be seriously out of line, apart altogether from the falling off in receipts on VAT and income tax, and the current budget deficit will be greater by that amount. It is already high enough, £1,234 million, but if it is to be added to and that amount has to be borrowed it has serious implications for the public finances and the level of borrowing.
I should like to point out again that the manner in which this whole affair has been handled by the Government, and the way the House has been treated in regard to these alleged savings, is most unsatisfactory. The time has come, now that we are discussing the revised Book of Estimates, for the Minister to come clean and tell us exactly where the savings are to be achieved, what validity there is in his hopes that they will be achieved and what his expectations are at this stage in regard to the budgetary arithmetic of which the figures I have mentioned are an essential part.
The motion before the House is that which is required in order to conform with Standing Order No. 122 so that the revised Estimates may be discussed by the House. This is a mechanical motion to enable the process to begin. I am not quite sure that a detailed discussion, Estimate by Estimate, today is really what we are about but since the Leader of the Opposition has raised a number of general points I intend to address those general points, not the specific details.
The procedure we are following this year is exactly the same as that followed every two years. We introduced the abridged Book of Estimates in the House last November and we are now producing the revised Book of Estimates to take account of the differences between the situation set out in the abridged book published before Christmas and the position now, taking account of the changes made as a result of budgetary decisions. I said on budget day that there would be £28.6 million savings in current expenditure compared to the pre-budget situation and that we would make savings of £30 million on pay. In fact, the amounts set out in the revised Book of Estimates provide for savings compared to the pre-budget situation of £23.9 million on pay rather than £30 million, and £34.53 million on non-pay. I would point out that I gave that information last week in response to a question by Deputy O'Kennedy. The savings that were involved were the details of the £28.6 million savings which I mentioned on budget day and were made public by me on 6 February last, so to that extent the House has already been informed of the breakdown of those savings. The differences between the two are apparent from the details given in this revised Book of Estimates now before us. It is not even valid for Deputy Haughey to add up £50 million revenue buoyancy——
I asked the Minister about that. He speaks about the list he gave of the £28.6 million. We have that list, but that has now been changed. It has gone up to £33 million.
The £28.6 million has increased and the differences will be seen from the detailed figures in each of the subheads in this Book of Estimates.
Should the Minister not give us a list of them as revised?
I will communicate with Deputy Haughey about that. The details of that are set out in the individual subheads in this Book of Estimates. I do not wish to be contentious with Deputy Haughey. They can be discussed item by item as we come to discuss these revised Estimates, and I am quite sure they will be discussed in that way.
For the rest, Deputy Haughey has attempted to add up what seemed to be his doubts about £50 million revenue buoyancy this year, £30 million savings on pay and £28.6 million on the other savings and to claim as a result of that rapid addition that there is a problem of £108 million as far as public finances are concerned this year. There is not. We have made provision for and set out in the Book of Estimates £23.9 million pay savings compared to the pre-budget situation and £34.5 million non-pay savings compared to the pre-budget situation, and the House will be aware that over the last two years we have certainly kept public expenditure both on pay and non-pay within the ranges we set out at budget time, and I have no doubt that we will do the same again this year.
As far as the revenue buoyancy figure is concerned, Deputy Haughey is attempting to forecast what the situation might be for the remainder of the year based on certain trends which he seemed to discern in the returns for the first quarter. The statements that Deputy Haughey made are based on information to which I drew attention in the first quarter figures but, as I said on the publication of the first quarter figures, I have no reason to be other than confident that the budget target this year will be met and, as Deputy Haughey knows from his own experience, you cannot project a trend for the whole year from any one tax revenue figure or expenditure figure during the course of the first quarter.
I am grateful to the Minister for the information, but would it be in order to ask a technical question?
Certainly.
In Cork the Taoiseach in dealing with this matter of revenue outcome did not quite agree with what the Minister has just said. As far as I can gather he indicated that he would like to have the April and May figures before he would come to any conclusions, but on that occasion he made a reference to a monthly monitoring of the Exchequer position. Could the Minister tell us if there is such a monitoring of income expenditure and can it be made public or made available to the House? I hope the Minister understands what I am talking about. It is a reference to what the Taoiseach said in Cork recently.
Without wishing to parse and analyse statements made by the Taoiseach or Deputy Haughey's understanding of what was in that statement, it seems that it was perfectly in accord with what I said when I published the first quarter figures. As I have said now, one cannot make a judgment on the trend of tax revenue under any heading on the basis of differences that appear to arise between the expectation for the first quarter and the outturn for the first quarter. The first quarter of the year is particularly a quarter when a number of influences are at work, including the effect of budgetary changes. What the Taoiseach said in Cork was that you could not draw conclusions from the first quarter figures, that he would want information for some further months before conclusions could be drawn as to what the outturn was likely to be compared to the budget targets.
On the other question that Deputy Haughey has just raised, I carry out a monthly monitoring of the budget position for the purpose of carrying out my functions in that regard, and I would not think that it is the kind of information that I would wish to make public or that it would be proper or useful to make public. It is part of the normal, day-to-day expenditure monitoring function that is carried out by me and my Department, which we have improved very substantially over the last couple of years and which I hope to improve still further for my benefit and that of my successors, whoever they might be.
It was mentioned in Cork publicly.
I have one technical question about information from the Minister. The expanded book with the expanded information was published in 1984. When will it be published in 1985?
I tread warily because the Deputy has a question on the Order Paper on this.
I searched and I did not see it.
I saw it last evening, so I hope I am not out of order. The answer which I intend to give to the Deputy when the question falls to be answered is that I cannot say exactly when it will be published but I hope to have it published earlier than the 1984 publication which came out on 1 November last year.
I have just one question. For the convenience of the House will the Minister list the exact changes that make up the £34 million? I know that it is all included in the book with the revisions, but for the convenience of the Members of the House will he provide such a list as he did for the £28 million? Now that he has revised it up to £34 million will he make available the list of the changes which make up the £34 million?
I have already dealt with that argument in reply to Deputy Haughey. Certainly I will consider putting the information together for the Deputies, although all of it is in the revised Book of Estimates in complete form under all subheads.
Nobody is doubting that.
Does it follow that the departmental balances are also taken in?
I apologise for having missed this point earlier. It is another one which the Opposition tend to raise at Question Time. The departmental balances figure is a straightforward figure. It is factual.
I did not raise that.
I am sorry, I understood the Deputy to raise it.
No, I raised the Department of Health balances.
Will the Minister make them available?
