Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 6 Nov 2024

Vol. 1061 No. 2

Appropriation Bill 2024: Second Stage

Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform (Deputy Paschal Donohoe)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am pleased to introduce the Appropriation Bill 2024 to the House. It is critical annual financial legislation. It has to be enacted before the end of the year to give effect to the authorisation of voted expenditure throughout 2024 and to allow for the continuation of expenditure into 2025. It has two main functions. The first is to provide legal authorisation for all of the expenditure that has occurred in 2024, on the basis of the Estimates voted on by the Dáil over the year. These allocations are known as the amounts to be appropriated for supply services. They are set out in section 1 and Schedule 1 to the Bill. These relate to the Revised Estimates, Further Revised Estimates and Supplementary Estimates that have been agreed by the Dáil over the course of the 2024. In net terms, these amount to €86.5 billion. In gross terms, and taking into account expenditure on the Social Insurance Fund and the National Training Fund, total gross voted expenditure allocated for this year is €104.3 billion. This reflects the Government’s sustainable investment in public services and a balanced and budgetary approach that will support households and firms, deliver improvements in public services, boost the resilience of the economy and further enhance the capital stock, including, most importantly, homes.

Our social protection system seeks to provide an effective social safety net for the more vulnerable members of society. The 2024 gross expenditure allocation for social protection, including spending on the Social Insurance Fund, is over €27 billion. This helped to improve our social welfare system. It delivered a €12 increase in core weekly rates and increased the income of an estimated 1.45 million recipients. It delivered increases to the qualified child payment and working family payment income thresholds and to the domiciliary care allowance rate and other important measures.

Investment in the Irish health service has also delivered better outcomes for our citizens. Ireland now performs well on treatable and preventable causes of mortality and has made significant improvements over the past decade, including reductions in the mortality rate for all cancers. We have had the highest proportion of a population reporting good or very good health among all EU countries as of 2022. The number of people on waiting lists for outpatient care has fallen since 2021 and there have been significant improvements in the average waiting time of patients.

Housing has also seen a considerable increase. In 2023, 11,938 new social homes were delivered. It is expected that this delivery will continue to grow in 2024 and grow in future years as the delivery pipeline continues to increase. A sum of €8.3 billion in funding is being provided this year for the housing, local government and heritage Vote group, including €4.9 billion in capital funding.

Education funding in 2024 saw the provision of an appropriate school place to over 970,000 students in primary, post-primary and special schools around the country, with a record number of teachers, almost 77,000, employed by the Department of Education. Close to 1,200 new teachers were employed in September 2024 for the commencement of the 2024-25 school year. Education capital expenditure in 2024 is supporting the continued progression of the 350 building projects currently at construction, while also facilitating close to 90 school building projects that are to proceed from tender stage to construction over the course of 2024 and early next year.

Funding has also enabled a range of other schemes and initiatives across government. In transport, the continuation of fare initiatives has helped with cost of living. There has been further investment in greenways and active travel. In further and higher education, we continue to invest in our apprenticeship programme, which is delivering 16,000 places this year. Provision to support childcare providers through the core funding scheme has ensured that fees for parents using these services have remained frozen, while the subsidies through the national childcare scheme have continued to increase. Over 200,000 children have benefited from the national childcare scheme to date this year, with out-of-pocket costs for parents having fallen by up to 50% for users of full-time early learning and childcare. The NCS subsidies are worth up to €5,000 per child in 2024.

A balanced approach to public service pay was achieved in the public service agreement for the period to 2026. The funding outlined in the Appropriation Bill reflects the Government’s continued commitment to responding to challenges as they arise. Of course, one of the greatest challenges we have experienced recently is the impact of inflation on living standards. I am conscious that so many are still worried about heating and lighting their homes this winter. We have a further package of cost-of-living supports in this budget. The 2024 cost of this package, of €2 billion, of progressive supports for households and businesses, including two €125 energy credits, are reflected and included in this Bill.

The second principal function of the Appropriation Bill is to provide a legal basis for expenditure to continue into next year. As set out in the Central Fund (Permanent Provisions) Act 1965, the authority for spending in 2025, prior to the agreement of the 2025 Estimates by the Dáil, is based on the amounts included in the 2024 Appropriation Bill. For this reason, it is essential that this Bill be enacted before the end of 2024. Should that not happen, there would be no authority to spend any voted moneys from the start of January 2025 until the approval of the 2025 Estimates.

To account for the complexity of very big projects, we now have multi-annual capital envelopes in place. This allows for the carryover of up to 10% of unspent voted capital.

Schedule 2 to the Bill sets out the proposed capital expenditure amounts that are to be carried forward to 2025 by Vote. This stands at €207.21 million, which is 1.6% of the total 2024 gross voted Revised Estimates capital allocation of just over €13 billion. The carryover figure is on a downward trend and is much lower than the carryover amounts requested by Departments in recent years. It reflects our increasing ability to spend our full capital budget in any given year for which it is allocated.

As in previous years, the Bill includes a provision for repayable advances from the Central Fund to the Paymaster General’s supply account in order to meet certain 2025 Exchequer liabilities due for payment over the first week of January.

The provision for these advances is critical as the banking system will be closed on Wednesday, 1 January. This means it is necessary for the funding to be in place in departmental bank accounts before the end of this year in order to meet those liabilities on a timely basis.

The Bill also provides for prefunding certain payments under Social Welfare Acts due between 1 and 6 January 2025 that are made on an agency basis by An Post. The advances provision in the Bill ensures that these payments can be transferred from the Department of Social Protection to the network of An Post offices throughout the country. Section 3 provides for up to €900 million to be advanced from the Central Fund to meet these requirements. This is a higher amount than in recent years due to payroll dates accruing in early 2025. This is technical, and any advances needed would then be repaid to the Central Fund next January.

This Bill is an essential element of housekeeping undertaken by the Dáil each year. It will authorise in law all of the expenditure that has taken place in 2024 on the basis of the Estimates voted on by the Dáil over the course of this year. It also provides authority for voted expenditure to continue in the period between the beginning of January 2025 and when the Dáil approves the 2025 Estimates. This is to ensure continued funding for the delivery of front-line public services, investing in health and education services, social protection payments, funding An Garda Síochána and so forth. It reflects the continuation of a planned approach to public spending. I commend the Bill to the House.

Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh

Every year, I try to speak on the Appropriation Bill, which is usually taken in the run-up to Christmas week. With the election pending, this Bill has obviously been brought forward. Every year, the Minister's statement makes the same omission. He said the appropriation is based on the Estimates voted on during the year. There is one Estimate which I do not recall ever being voted on in the way the other Estimates are. It does not come before any committee but appears in the budget expenditure report. The Minister will know which one it is. It is Vote 15 - Secret Service. It is not a big sum of money in the context of what we are discussing and it is not enough to delay. It appears as a separate subhead and even though the Minister tried to be helpful last year and other Ministers have tried to be helpful in other years, it still has not been allocated to a Department. If it was allocated to a Department as part of a group of Estimates, so be it. Does it fit in with the Department of Defence? No, because it sits on its own. Does it fit in with the Department of Finance to maybe stop cybercrime? No. Does it sit with the Department of Justice? No. The secret service Vote in this Dáil and in previous Dáileanna sits on its own. It had a different number previously. It was Vote 15 in recent years and I cannot remember what number it was before that.

This anomaly needs to be addressed. It is obviously not going to be addressed in this Dáil but it should be addressed in a future Dáil, in that the Minister should just allocate it to where it is appropriate. I have never sought information on the exact amount of funding. It is a small amount of money. If it goes to the area on which people say, on the quiet, it is spent on, then so be it. If it is the amount that is spent on securing and protecting the services of the State in the way other countries do that, it is a minuscule amount. It is not about the funding. The figure was even lower and has stayed constant for the past ten years in my memory.

People have laughed at this and said, "Oh yeah, the secret service", and I have sometimes been quite flippant about it but there is no secret service. It is not like we are in Britain, where MI5 is answerable to a committee of Parliament in some ways. We do not have that mechanism but maybe we should have it. That has been a discussion in the background in the Dáil in recent years, especially with regard to cybercrime and so on. Maybe there is a need for greater disaster planning and planning for how to tackle what we saw when the HSE computers went down. If that is what is meant here, then so be it.

The only thing I could find is Ireland's Secret Service in England. I have a copy of the book here. It is from 1924. It does not address a secret service organisation. Edward Brady wrote the book, which is about activities engaged in Britain from 1919 to 1921 by those who were acting under the authority of Michael Collins. I do not know whether that organisation continued. As far as I know, the IRB disappeared. There is no secret service, to my knowledge. There is an organisation within the Defence Forces, J2, which comes under the Defence Forces Vote and deals with intelligence. It is not a secret service. It is open and answerable to the military authorities, as are those within An Garda Síochána who are involved in the area of surveillance.

This is an anomaly. I will not labour the point. I will deal with other issues when we reach Committee Stage.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

As was said, the purpose of the Appropriation Bill is to give statutory authority to the amounts voted on by the Dáil during the year from the original Estimates, Further Revised Estimates and Supplementary Estimates. If the Bill was not enacted, the Departments could not spend. The Bill also allows for capital carryover as per the Finance Act 2004. Each Department can carry over 10% of its capital allocation to the next year.

The key to this Appropriation Bill is that it is a constitutional requirement and is essential to ensure that the Departments can spend come January. For this reason, we will be supporting it. The Bill used to be waved through the Dáil without debate. It is important that this is no longer the case. Obviously, everything is rushed because we are to have an election, so there is not much time for discussion. If anything, this House needs greater scrutiny of the budget and spending. People at home have had their eyes opened about this Government's approach to spending their money. The Government cannot properly manage to construct a bike shed or a security hut for a reasonable price. I do not need to remind anyone of the wholesale mismanagement of the national children's hospital.

Capital investment is key not only in dealing with the major cracks in public infrastructure but is also a key driver with regard to job creation and regional development. The public needs housing, healthcare, community centres, flood defences, roads and critical infrastructure. In Mayo, the chronic shortage of housing is the number one reason that constituents contact my office. There are simply not enough social and affordable homes being built and the Government knows this. Housing need is rising across the State continuously.

We also need investment in Knock Airport and our rural roads. For this reason, it is astonishing, as people will see, that €129 million is being carried over to next year that was unspent this year. We also have the western rail corridor that needs to be started immediately. Without this vital infrastructure, we cannot fulfil our true potential along the western corridor and the Atlantic economic corridor. Additionally, the ports and harbours in Mayo are in need of investment. I recently raised the situation at Porteen Harbour with the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

With regard to the €31 million unspent in agriculture, the debacle around the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, the scoring and not having the information that is needed for farmers is such a deterrent to farmers engaging in the climate change actions they need to do. I have followed all of the schemes, from rural environment protection scheme, REPS, 4 and the agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, to the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, and ACRES. One after the other, these schemes have been a diminution of what they are supposed to do with regard to facilitating farmers to farm in a climate-friendly way. It is an absolute failure of the Government, particularly with regard to ACRES. There is no way that any other sector would have to go through what farmers have to go through in order to get the payments they are entitled to.

I turn to education and the carryover there. The school estate is also in need of attention. Earlier today, we had visitors from the Castlebar Educate Together school in the House. It was promised a new school building two years ago, but nothing has happened since. In fact, it is not two years ago, it goes back further. I talked to sixth-class students today who have been promised a new school since they started, and it still has not happened. They are still operating across three locations in Castlebar. That is an absolute headache for families with multiple children attending the school, particularly where there is a child with special needs, and they cannot be schooled together with their sibling. It is unfair on these children that a proper school identity cannot evolve with different children being educated in multiple different unsuitable locations. Castlebar primary school was also in touch with my office regarding a playing field that is required. St. Gerald's College in Castlebar regularly has to close its gym because of leaks in the roof. There are no excuses for it when we are dealing with so much money here. There is no excuse that so many places are left behind. We find in County Mayo and the west that many places are left behind. It is not right. We need positive discrimination if anything for infrastructure that needs to be done in the west to fulfil our potential and move from the disadvantaged position we are in. There is no shortage of need for capital investment from the Government. I ask the Minister to ensure this is where Government funding goes, instead of to projects that people did not want or ask for.

I have to raise the issue of the pyrite redress scheme again. Day after day, I talk to homeowners who face the scourge of the pyrite scandal. We need 100% redress now. We need a full public inquiry into how this was allowed to happen and the light regulation or absence of regulation of the quarries and suppliers.

Deputy Róisín Shortall

I will take a minute at the start because the likelihood is that this is the last time I will speak in this Chamber after a very long period. I express my sincere thanks to the voters of Dublin North-West who placed their trust in me and voted for me over a period of 32 years. I will say that I am exceptionally grateful to them for doing that, and I have been honoured to represent the people of Dublin North-West throughout those many years. I also put on record my appreciation and thanks to my staff, Jake Ryan, Paul Mulville and Ryan Kelly, and to others through the years who have provided exceptional support to me, and without whose support I would not have been able to do this job. I thank all of them.

I turn to the legislation before us. To a large extent this is a box-ticking exercise. It is yet again a situation where there really is not any scrutiny of the legislation we are required to support or get through this House. I will spend my short time dealing with one particular area where there is a huge underspend, as detailed in the Bill. This year, almost €130 million has been deferred to next year by the Department of Transport. This accounts for approximately 60% of the total deferred surrenders. It is a huge amount of money. Year after year, the Department has one of the highest underspends despite the urgent need to progress public transport projects. The Minister, who along with me represents the northside of Dublin, will be only too aware of the need for investment in public transport and we have waited a very long time.

This situation is completely indefensible. How can we expect to meet our climate goals without a major acceleration of public transport projects? Under successive Governments, one abandoned or delayed public transport project has followed another. We may now have a Government that says all the right things on public transport infrastructure, but we still do not have one capable of delivering those projects. It is 24 years since the Dublin metro was first proposed and we are still at least a decade away from this project being delivered, and that is in a best-case scenario. This project was first proposed in 2000, with a target for delivery of 2010. Had it been delivered it would be turning a profit by now, but at the end of 2024 it still has not even been granted planning. I accept that Transport Infrastructure Ireland also has questions to answer when it comes to this delay. It is not just the Government. TII, after all, arrived at the oral hearing with 200 previously unseen documents, meaning public consultation had to be reopened after the public hearing. The repeated failure to deliver MetroLink has made communities on the northside of Dublin, such as the ones I represent in Dublin North-West, understandably sceptical that this project will ever be delivered. They have been seriously let down time and again. Dublin North-West is the only constituency in the greater Dublin area without any rail service at all, and there are many constituencies, principally on the southside, that have good bus, Luas and DART services. In Dublin North-West we are entirely dependent on buses.

In that regard, the Minister will also be aware of the particular concerns currently in his constituency and mine with regard to the withdrawal of the 11 bus service. Residents in Wadelai, Hillcrest and Glasnevin are to lose a vital service with the removal of the 11 service next month, under what I regard as an ill-judged plan by the NTA. The 19 service is set to replace the 11 service but it will be a far inferior service to the existing one. When the 19 service is introduced, local residents will be required to change buses to continue south of the city and further afield, including a lot of elderly people and those with mobility issues. In Dublin North-West we have approximately twice as many people aged over 65 as the rest of the city. This decision shows no regard for the profile of the local area or its needs. This decision needs to be reversed and, at a minimum, the northside leg of the 11 service must be retained for the next two years, as the southside leg is being retained. If we want people to use public transport more in our city, we should be scaling up services, not cutting back on them. We all agree with the principles underpinning the BusConnects project, but we need to bring communities with us. The only way to create the buy-in needed is to make BusConnects a success. It will only be a success if it meets local needs. The NTA must reverse this decision and begin engaging meaningfully with the local community and its concerns.

On the subject of public transport provision, Dublin North-West has also been repeatedly failed in respect of light rail services. When the Luas was first proposed many years ago it included a line to Ballymun, but regrettably that part of the plan was abandoned. There were to be three lines, including one to Ballymun. The extraordinary justification at the time was that not enough people drove cars in the area and the aim of the Luas was to reduce the number of cars on the road. How discriminatory can you get? Such a narrow criterion for inclusion was desperately shortsighted but unsurprising. This part of north Dublin has been neglected for decades and denied access to good-quality public services and the mobility necessary for full participation in social, cultural and economic life. The justification that MetroLink will provide that connectivity rings pretty hollow locally now, given how long this project has been promised, and yet is still undelivered. I have been involved in the consultation relating to the current iteration of MetroLink and have put out leaflets and information about it locally, but it is the third iteration and consultation that local residents have been involved in. You cannot blame them for being sceptical about this ever being delivered and the inability of successive Governments to think big and deliver large-scale transport projects.

It is welcome that the Finglas Luas has finally been approved by the Cabinet, but its delivery must be prioritised to address years of underinvestment in sustainable, high-capacity transport solutions for our area. I fear that this recent announcement may be little more than a cynical election ploy. I sincerely hope that is not the case and that there is real political will to get this project over the line. However, experience would suggest otherwise. I was clearing out my office and came across some ten-year-old leaflets. The Finglas Luas was promised then and we are still waiting. It is now more than four years since the first public consultation on this project and the delivery date has already been pushed out from 2028 to 2031 and that is at the earliest. Is it any wonder people have lost faith in the State's ability to deliver these major public transport projects?

It must also be said that the planned route for the Finglas Luas has one glaring omission. There is an opportunity to interchange with the proposed MetroLink route. Instead of continuing the Finglas Luas to Ballymun where the MetroLink is set to stop, the current proposal terminates at Charlestown. That does not make any sense at all. Why is the scope of the project so limited? Linking the Luas and the metro at Ballymun would provide unparalleled connectivity with the airport, not only for Finglas, but the greater Dublin area. Why is it that the north side of Dublin is only getting an additional four stops? One only has to look at the length of the existing green line on the south side to see there is a clear imbalance. There is an urgent need to address the poor public transport provision on the north side of Dublin. That is why the Department of Transport's repeated underspends must be called out. Not only should these important projects be viewed as a long-term public good, they are also critical to our transition to a carbon neutral society. They have the ability to be transformative socially, environmentally and economically, but they have to be more than plans. They have to be realised. The next government must show some ambition and prioritise delivery of these essential public transport projects, because what has been missing is not a commitment to these projects, but a commitment to actually delivering them. We have not seen the political will to do that to date unfortunately.

Deputy Martin Browne

When I hear of a carryover of expenditure of almost €130 million related to transport, I have to ask why are the people of County Tipperary who live along the route of the N24 faced with continuing funding uncertainty regarding the N24 project? Both parts of this project have in recent years been subject to uncertainty. Tipperary County Council has been forced to write to the Department expressing concern at this.

In recent weeks, I attended the design update for the Limerick Junction to Cahir project, but it is again subject to the uncertainty of the funding regime and sponsors of the project have to beg for money each time. This is an important project. It is important for road safety along the N24 and along its route, the interests of specific towns and villages are intertwined with it. I was told that certain parts of the project could be considered as stand-alone and could be fast tracked if the money was available. However, without funding, the elements that could provide the most immediate relief are beyond us. With this in mind and the intolerable traffic situation in Tipperary town and the effect it has on civil life, business and tourism, this funding uncertainty must end.

Funding issues are also faced on the Cahir to Waterford part of the project, slowing down progress and raising questions about the Minister's commitment to the south east as well as the mid-west. Today, a meeting of the Carrick-on-Suir and Waterford councils took place. There are serious concerns about this project. Huge money has been spent to complete stage 2 but stage 3 is stalled because of a lack of funding. There was cross-party support for stage 3 to be funded and completed as soon as possible and the money that has been spent so far will be wasted. The N24, when finished, will connect Limerick on the west coast to the east in Waterford and will be of huge benefit to all the regions in this corridor. People need to be put first and that must apply to any future sequencing of projects such as this one.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

In some ways, this is a formality we go through at the end of each year. As I understand it, it is the final authorisation of the expenditure of money throughout the year and of money that will be carried over that has not been spent. It is an opportunity to dwell a little bit on the issue of the expenditure of the enormous amount of public money totalling €86 billion. It is the public's money and it is an extraordinary fact, with this record level of expenditure, we can still be in a situation where we have more than 100,000 people on housing waiting lists, huge numbers of people are not eligible to be on social housing waiting lists because their income is too high, but they also cannot access affordable housing, almost 1 million people are on hospital waiting lists, people are crowded on trolleys in our public health service and 110,000 children with special needs are waiting for therapies and services. Vulnerable children who need those services are waiting years. I could go on about the failure to deliver for many people with this enormous amount of money on basics such as housing, health and services for vulnerable children with special needs and those with disabilities. Some of that is about having to spend more money, but some of it has to be questioned. Are we getting the best value for the money we are spending?

I certainly want to take this opportunity to make a point to the Minister and to anyone serious about trying to address some of those big problems. The Government produced a report about construction costs - I think it was done by people in The Housing Agency - which came out at the end of September. The Minister may be familiar with it. It made for sober reading in that it showed that currently an semi-detached house on an estate is being delivered at €450,000 for a new build, apartments at €550,000 and suburban apartments at €590,000. That is a high price for something we absolutely need but it is clearly unaffordable for a huge number of the people who need the housing. That is a demonstration of significant market failure and the inability of the market to deliver housing at an affordable level. This is relevant to the expenditure of public money because a huge volume of the housing the State has delivered has been purchased from private builders. To address an existential and urgent housing crisis, I have actively campaigned for the State to do that. It should buy houses when it has not built them. I would prefer if it was building them in the numbers necessary, but I am in favour of us buying them to make up the deficit because we need social and affordable housing. However, it should be obvious that we could be getting a lot more social and affordable housing if we could deliver the houses more cheaply than the private market is capable of delivering them. That is why there is a serious - I am convinced of this and I would like to convince this House and whatever Government comes in - need for a State construction company and it could deliver housing more cheaply. Why? Even the biggest builders in the country do not have the scale necessary to deliver the sort of housing output the Government now accepts we have to get to. It is double the number Housing for All originally proposed, 50,000, 60,000 or perhaps 70,000 houses per year.

Even if the private sector wanted to, or was able to, it clearly does not have the capacity. Between them, Cairn and Glenveagh deliver 2,500 houses in a year. They are the biggest builders, with approximately 350 people working for them, but they are just not big enough. They do not have the scale to do what is necessary and they are clearly not able to deliver the houses at affordable prices, even for the State or for individual buyers.

What we need is to have a company of scale that controls the land bank so that it is not subject to speculation. When we break down the construction cost of housing, a very large part of the cost relates to land. The study I mentioned estimates about €70,000 of the enormous cost is for land. Much of that is because of the speculation by private developers who own the land bank, who flip it and so on. We must strip out that. The report also estimates that about €40,000 of the price relates to the profit margin of the developer. It also adds in a significant cost for the cost of finance, in other words, the profits of the banks. We can also add in sales and marketing. Consultants are often brought in who charge large amounts of money to do the sales and marketing for these developments.

We can strip out all of those things and get the economies of scale that a construction company the size of the ESB, which has 8,000 workers, can provide. State enterprises can work. The ESB is a world-beating company. It charges too much for its electricity, but that is because of deregulation. Historically, it has been a success story of State enterprise. We should have a State construction company on the scale of the ESB building on a not-for-profit basis, with a land bank and its own construction capacity. We could slash the cost of housing and consequently get more housing for the billions that are being spent in order to deliver the housing we need. The Government should seriously think about that. We electrified and transformed this country with the ESB, a State not-for-profit enterprise, and we must do the same in order to build social and affordable homes as well as for the necessary retrofitting of homes and to put in place necessary water infrastructure.

In my area - this is replicated all over the country - there are sites on zoned land in public ownership in Old Connaught in Rathmichael where they have not even put in the water infrastructure yet. This is happening everywhere else too. It is absolutely insane. We must have the capacity to do this. We could do it cheaply and with the urgency and focus that is required if we had some control over the land bank and when and what we build.

That is my pitch for a State construction company. We will be very actively campaigning on that because we think we cannot solve the housing crisis unless we begin to move in that direction because we are facing massive market failure when it comes to housing. It must be capable of delivering the numbers required and at the right price. Even if the market delivers housing, the price is just too high and there is no sign that it is going to come down.

There are a few last points I want to make. There was an overrun in sports of €24 million not spent. This year we had a fantastic run-out in sports, especially at the Olympics. In my area, the whole borough is full of pride for Jack Marley, who fought in the Olympics in the heavyweight division and got to the quarter finals. A young woman, Robin O'Reilly, got to the European championships in boxing also. We have had a fantastic level of new involvement in sports - in soccer and GAA. There is a fantastic growth in young people getting involved in sports, in particular young women. Every single club I know is crying out for all-weather pitches, clubhouses and basic facilities. There are just not enough of them. While there have been some new facilities, they are not nearly on the scale necessary to meet the demand of young people. Sport is important. When we look at the success in the Olympics and in the Paralympics, we can see what our young people can achieve if we provide them with the facilities. It might help the Irish soccer team improve its fortunes if at a grassroots level we proactively put money into providing the facilities, pitches, clubhouses and all the other equipment necessary to facilitate young people to excel in sport. That €24 million could go a long way. We should think about that, but we also need to significantly increase the amount of money we put into grassroots sports for young people and in local communities.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

The cost overruns and lack of value for money evident in the context of the Appropriation Bill are a major issue. One of the most glaring issues that arose in 2024 is the persistent problem of cost overruns. Projects across multiple Departments routinely exceed their initial budgets, often by substantial margins. For instance, the Department of Defence has seen numerous projects balloon in cost, with little or no accountability for the overruns. The pattern is not limited to defence infrastructure projects. The Department of Transport frequently exceeds its budget, leading to a waste of taxpayers' money.

The lack of value for money is another crucial issue. Despite the allocation of substantial funds, the outcomes often fall short of expectations. We can look at the healthcare sector for example. When I came into the House in 2007, the health budget was €7 billion. It is now €26.5 billion and there are cost overruns every year. The Minister has been in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform for a long time, and now he is back in it again. The overruns are just unbelievable.

The Bill also highlights the allocation for the upcoming fiscal year. The lack of accountability is a fundamental issue underpinning the problems. Departments and agencies often operate with minimal oversight, leading to mismanagement and inefficiencies. The absence of stringent accountability measures means that those responsible for cost overruns and poor value for money face little or no consequences. That is not acceptable.

I am a small businessperson. Any businessperson, big or small, could not operate in this way. This culture of impunity must be addressed if we are to see any meaningful improvement in Government spending. There must be responsibility. I am not naming anyone, but Secretaries General of Departments are well paid, so one can imagine that they should have sufficient experience to watch spending. It is simply unacceptable. The Appropriation Bill 2024, while necessary for funding the operation of the Government, exposes deep-seated cost overruns, lack of value for money and Government overspending.

Without significant reforms to enhance accountability and ensure efficient use of funds, these problems will continue to undermine public trust and waste taxpayers' money. It is imperative that the Government takes decisive action, but I do not think it will. Let us just take the children's hospital, for example. My goodness. Professor Jimmy Sheehan and others came in here and told us they would build a hospital on the M50. We had a site of 70 acres. They said they would build it for between €900 million and €1.1 billion in 11 to 13 months. They also warned about going ahead with what we are doing. The Minister was invited to the AV room as well to hear that the equipment would be obsolete by the time the hospital was built, and here we are six, seven or eight years later when, of course, the equipment is obsolete. It is shameful to put the hospital in the wrong place, with no helipads other than a small helipad for red craft on a calm day. The children's hospital is the most massive example.

Then there is the bike shed, which we all hear about when we knock on doors. Someone must be accountable. Every Minister says he or she knew nothing about it. The Taoiseach knew nothing about it. He is angry. He said it should not have happened and it will not happen again. We get the usual stuff. No one is accountable. Somebody - the procurement officer and his or her superiors - must be responsible for it. They must be responsible for it.

Then we heard about the security hut on the way into Agriculture House. No one is responsible for that either. This is not acceptable. Heads would roll in any private company - full stop. They just could not argue the toss. First, it would not happen because the company would not keep functioning. How come Government projects are a soft touch? When the M8 motorway and national roads were built by Sisk and Roadbridge, the different elements of them came in under budget and ahead of time.

It was well publicised and acknowledged at the time and rightly so. I saw the way they worked and built those. Why is it that since then we are allowing such laggards and allowing this to happen? The funding is going back to Departments. Deputy Boyd Barrett talked about the money going back in sport. I think he said €24 million. I know that many clubs, including my own club in Newcastle, had money allocated for two years but unfortunately, An Bórd Pleanála turned down their planning application. That is the kind of money that will probably have to be returned and I can understand that with projects but €24 million is a lot of money. I was talking about a couple of hundred thousand euro. We know there are issues like that. There has to be planning permission and boxes ticked but that kind of money going back is unacceptable.

To think that €129 million is going back on national roads, how could this happen? We had uproar this year, and rightly so, when many existing national road projects were taken out of the proposed road works because there was no funding. In my town, we had the very same thing. Funding was pulled for the pavement overlay in the town of Fermoy. Councillor Peter O'Donoghue and many others contacted me about it, even though I am not from that area at all. It is a massive issue. They are coming up here to do sit-ins at the Department's offices. How can this happen? How can €124 million be going back? It is only early November. There is €124 million going back when there are projects waiting. Take the N24, soon to be M24, project under Arrup consultants which runs from Pallasgreen to Cahir at Cloghabreeda. Thankfully, that is continuing after a lot of lobbying to get the couple of million to keep the consultants in place. The other leg, the most important part of the road, runs from Cloghabreeda roundabout outside Cahir on to Clonmel, Carrick-on-Suir and then on to Pilltown in Waterford and parts of Kilkenny. Kilkenny County Council is the lead design team but that has been stalled. Arrup consultants got the contract and it was going to cost €3 million to keep them engaged on that most important, long-term and desperately needed upgrade to that road. We thought it was going to be upgraded to a motorway but now we have been told it will be a single carriageway. Nonetheless, it has stopped dead in the water for the sum of €3 million. The same happened two years ago and Deputies from all the affected counties - Kilkenny, Waterford and Tipperary - got together and thankfully, money was found. A sum of €3 million is not an awful lot and we see a vast amount of money going back. This should not be happening. That whole stop-start process should not be happening. How can we develop projects if we are going to be depending on consultants from one year to the next to bring them on from the pre-planning stage to notice to treat stage and all of the different ideas and design stages. We have to have continuity. There is no point in funding it for last year and this year and then there is no funding and it stops dead in its tracks. That kind of piecemeal approach, with a lack of forward planning, is not good enough. Again, a businessperson would not be able to sustain that.

Someone must be responsible. The buck stops with the Minister, the Taoiseach and all of the other Ministers but it also stops with the Secretaries General of the Departments. The Secretary General of the Minister's Department was asked at one stage to move to the Department of Health and he got a huge increase in wages. That would not happen in any private sector because it could not happen. I think the increase was €20,000 on top of an already exorbitant wage. What is so special about these people? They do a job and they are paid to do a job and they must have the competence but we need answers. We cannot go out and face the public and tell them who is responsible for the bicycle shed, the hut behind Agriculture House, or the printer that would not fit into the print room. I thank the printers for all of the work they do for us. Who could procure an item that would not fit? Who was responsible for procuring the Luas that would not fit over O'Connell Bridge and blocked the traffic? Where is the joined-up thinking? Somebody must be held accountable. We have been entrusted by the people and I thank the people of Tipperary for supporting me to get in here to ask these questions. This just beggars belief. We have to go back now, wave our hands and tell them that we do not know or that nobody is responsible. Nobody is responsible. Nobody knows who is responsible. That is not acceptable in a so-called democracy. It is not a dictatorship that we are working in. We have to be held accountable. The Minister has to be held accountable and, in turn, Secretaries General and senior officials have to be held accountable. Nobody is accountable. They are operating with impunity. There are no repercussions for the wilful waste. The old saying is that wilful waste makes woeful want and my goodness, have we wilful waste going on at a time of such need. There are people with scoliosis and a plethora of different problems and issues. They badly need money. I have mentioned Scoil Aonghusa, special schools and special places in Clonmel. When people look at this, they will not vote for any of us. They are deflated, disappointed, disgusted - there are not enough adjectives to describe it - and one cannot blame them, with the waste and the lack of accountability. These issues come up in the media, in The Ditch or wherever and no one is responsible. It just happens; it is Santa Claus or I do not know who. Nobody. That is not acceptable in any democracy. This is meant to be an accountable democracy. We are meant to hold people to account. We have the Appropriation Bill here and we are meant to get answers but it will be the same next year.

Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform (Deputy Paschal Donohoe)

I thank all Deputies for the contributions they have made. I will respond now to a number of the matters that were raised in this debate, including the issue of accountability in relation to the huge amounts of money that I am asking the Dáil to vote on this afternoon. I thank Deputies for recognising the importance of the passing of this legislation but I would emphasise that in order to get to this point, Revised and Supplementary Estimates had to be passed in order for this Bill to be passed. Those individual Estimates were all debated by the Oireachtas in the relevant Oireachtas committee. Before we got to the point of dealing with the Appropriation Bill here today, Supplementary Estimates were passed. That involved Ministers bringing those Supplementary Estimates before their Oireachtas committees to be scrutinised at that point.

It is custom that this legislation is dealt with quickly by the Dáil. As Deputies Conway-Walsh and Ó Snodaigh acknowledged, it normally happens during the month of December, later in the year but we know that it is not happening then for other reasons. That said, it is important to emphasise that even though the timing is different, in order to get to the point of the Appropriation Bill being before the House, Estimates were discussed by the relevant Oireachtas committee. That is the point at which the scrutiny happens.

The next point I would make relates to the carryovers that we have discussed here this evening. First, the capital carryover in this particular Appropriation Bill is €207.21 million. I take the point that it is a very large amount of money but it is still only 1.6% of the total capital allocation that was available to Government Departments for 2024. Even though it is a very large amount of money, it is a comparatively small amount of the total capital budget that was available to all Departments. The money is being carried over but that does not mean it is being handed back. It just means that it is going to be spent at a different point. Deputy Boyd Barrett talked about €24 million but that money is not being surrendered back. The money is still with the Department of sport. What it means is that instead of being spent in October, November or December, it will be spent in January, February or March or at some other point next year. The point that the Deputy and others were making was-----

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

It is not necessarily the case that the budget will go up the next year-----

Deputy Paschal Donohoe

But the money is not lost. The point that was being made or suggested was that because this is a carryover, the money is being handed back but that is wrong. In fact, because it is a carryover, it is being retained within the Department but spent in a different year. The absence of a carryover would mean the money is not being spent in the Department but the presence of a carryover means that it is. There is a real and fundamental misunderstanding of what a carryover is here. The money is being spent but just in a different calendar year.

Charges in relation to waste and mismanagement were made strongly by Deputy McGrath a moment ago. He made a point about accountability. I am here in front of the Dáil and in front of an Oireachtas committee very regularly regarding the use of taxpayers' money and that is as it should be.

I will be the first to acknowledge there are a number of areas in which things should have been done better, and I have acknowledged that in the past. I will still make the point that the vast majority of our country's money, particularly when it comes to capital expenditure, is being used in the way the country would want and does deliver projects that are either on time or broadly on budget.

I will make a broad point about costs going up. Just because a cost goes up does not mean it is the same thing as a cost overrun. We have gone through a period in which the cost of building anything in our country has gone up for reasons that are beyond our control. The Deputies will know this as well as I do. The prices of concrete, wood, metal, energy and all the things we need, just as the private sector needs, to build a home or deliver a wastewater treatment plant or any other project have gone up. Much of that increase is because the costs of raw materials and energy have also increased. The cost of something going up is not the same as a cost overrun. In many cases, the increase is not due to any alleged incompetence or inefficiency. The private sector is having to spend more to deliver certain projects, and no State or Government is immune to those changes in the price of the raw materials we need to deliver very big projects or any projects at all.

Deputy Boyd Barrett made a point about a State construction company. I look forward to having that debate with him in the coming weeks. It is still worth emphasising that the State does deliver and build homes. It builds them through local authorities. As I noted in my speech a moment ago, in 2023, 11,938 social homes were delivered. I know that is not the same as built and I know many of them were purchased. However, the majority were built by the State. They were built by local authorities, which, as the Deputy knows as well as I, are units or parts of the State. While there is definitely a discussion to be had about a State construction company, and I will have that debate with the Deputy-----

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

I am not sure the Minister is right in what he has said.

Deputy Paschal Donohoe

I am right.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

I am not sure the Minister is right.

Deputy Paschal Donohoe

I know I am right. I am wary of making points with absolute certainty but the point I am making to the Deputy is that the State is directly involved in building homes. It does so through local authorities. The majority of those 11,938 homes would have been built directly by local authorities, which is the State. That is the argument I am making to the Deputy. To suggest the State is not involved in directly building homes would be wrong. Even if the State body to which the Deputy referred were to be established, it would still have to buy concrete and employ people at rates that are comparable to those in the private sector because, otherwise, those people would not work for the State. It may well be that the organisation for which the Deputy is making the case would not make a profit and there would be no marketing, as the Deputy has acknowledged, but those aspects are only a comparatively small part of the cost of building a home at the moment. The State will have to deal with all of the other costs that any private sector company is dealing with at the moment and that our local authorities are currently dealing with.

As I said at the beginning, I thank all Deputies for their recognition of the importance of passing this legislation. I acknowledge this debate has been comparatively short, given the amount of money involved in this Bill. I emphasise again that all the different strands of this funding have been debated elsewhere within the Oireachtas. I thank Deputies for their co-operation.

Question put and declared carried.