Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 6 April 2016
198. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform for a breakdown of the line item "public capital plan" for each of the years 2016 to 2021, inclusive, contained in the 2016 budget manual, page C.51, table A9, line 5. [5579/16]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe line item referred to in the Deputy's question is calculated from the difference between the gross voted capital ceilings 2016-2021 as published in the Stability Programme Update (SPU) in April 2015 and the gross voted capital ceilings as published in the capital plan "Building on Recovery: Infrastructure and Capital Investment" in September 2015. The increases in Exchequer capital investment over that published in the SPU range from an extra €0.1bn in 2016 to an extra €1.6bn in 2021.
Given the effect of capital smoothing whereby a four year average is taken, this results in only a quarter of the increases in the Public Capital plan having an impact on estimated fiscal space derived using the Expenditure Benchmark. For example, the €0.4bn increase in the 2018 capital ceiling in the capital plan compared to the SPU will only use €0.1bn of projected fiscal space.
