The Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General recently released the appropriation accounts for 2019, detailing the expenditure of each government department for last year.
The documents show that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine had an unspent surplus of over €98.4 million in 2019.
The surplus is liable to be surrendered to the exchequer at the end of each year. However, any part of the surplus may be carried over to the following year by the department.
The department’s surplus at the end of 2019 was considerably lower than the surplus at the end 2018, which was over €200 million, of which €22 million was carried over into last year.
In 2019, the department’s funding provision was around €1.68 billion, including the €22 million mentioned above. The actual outrun of expenditure was around €1.64 billion.
Appropriations-in-aid – which are receipts usually arising from the normal course of the department’s business – were determined to be €388 million (above the estimated figure of €333 million), which was deducted from the exchequer-provided funding.
The department’s expenditure was divided into four programmes.
The first of these (Programme A) is food safety; animal and plant health; and animal welfare. The estimated provision for this programme was for around €274 million, but only just under €262 million was spent.
The second programme (Programme B) is farm/sector support and controls. The estimated provision for this programme was just over €893 million. The actual outrun was €874 million.
The third programme (Programme C), dealing with policy and strategy, was budgeted for an estimated provision of some €367 million, with an actual outrun of under €357 million.
The final programme (Programme D) deals with the seafood sector. This sector was budgeted for a provision of almost €144 million, but just under €143 million was spent.
Farm/sector support and controls
Looking in more detail at Programme B, dealing with farm/sector support and controls, the Areas of Natural Constraints (ANC) scheme was budgeted for an estimated provision of €250 million last year, of which around €1.5 million was unspent.
Beef sustainability schemes had an estimated provision of €85.8 million. These schemes actually saw a total overspend, with an outrun of €87.1 million.
Knowledge transfer had an estimated provision of €25 million, and saw an underspend of almost €3 million.
The Sheep Welfare Scheme saw a slight underspend of just over €600,000 out of an estimated provision of €18 million.
Supports and controls for the forestry and bioenergy sector had an estimated provision of over €103 million. It was in this area that the €22 million deferred surrender from 2018 was funneled in.
Of that €103 million, some €14 million was unspent.