MINISTER OF State for Finance Martin Mansergh was asked to clarify last year’s €15 million underspend on regional airports at a meeting of the Oireachtas finance and public service committee yesterday.
The Minister told the committee €128 million of unspent capital from Government departments and agencies in 2008 was being carried over to this year. “In the vast majority of cases the underspend is merely a mild deferral. It isn’t that the money is not needed and won’t be spent,” he said. He said he was supportive of regional airports and welcomed this week’s announcement that the State’s smaller airports will not have to pay airport departures tax.
Fine Gael TD Kieran O’Donnell, who had queried the underspend, said it was regrettable the exemption did not extend to Shannon airport.
A Department of Transport spokeswoman later confirmed that €24 million was allocated to regional airports in 2008 and €9 million was spent.
“The reason for the €15 million underspend was that applications for grants were slower than anticipated. The €15 million underspend was then reallocated under the Transport 21 envelope to other transport modes,” she said.
Mr O’Donnell also queried what he said was an underspend of €20 million on IDA grants to industry. Dr Mansergh pointed to the slow uptake of grants by companies and said “the IDA is something that’s particularly hard to estimate in advance”.
The Minister said the capital carryover facility was designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of management by departments and agencies of capital programmes and projects. “The carryover facility means that money which would have been lost to the capital programmes and projects concerned under the annual system of allocating capital can now be made available for spending on programme priorities in the subsequent year,” he said.
Dr Mansergh outlined the main priority areas for spending the capital carryover of €128 million in 2009. He said the Department of the Environment was proposing to allocate €6.3 million to the Carbon Fund. Almost €78 million would be spent by the Department of Transport on road improvements and public transport, he said.
He said over €18 million would be spent by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment for investment in enterprise, science and technology and county enterprise development.
The Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources was allocating over €15 million for its information and communications technology programme, multimedia developments and sustainable energy and energy research.
