PAC Opening Statement

PAC-R-2088 Correspondence 3C.2 Meeting 180 28/01/16

Mark Griffin, Accounting Officer

Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources

Thursday 28 January 2016

I am appearing here this morning in relation to two issues, the Eircodes project and the 2014 audited accounts of the Department.

The Government approved the award of a contract to Capita Business Services in 2013 to develop, rollout and operate the National Postcode system, Eircode, under licence for an initial ten year period. Eircode was launched in July 2015 and a unique 7 digit postcode was provided to each of the 2.2 million residential and business addresses in Ireland. A national information campaign was completed over the summer 2015 to inform the public about Eircodes.

Public Sector bodies are supporting the introduction of eircodes and since the launch several of them have started using eircodes in customer engagement and service provision and this process will continue over the coming months. Capita has also signed up over 20 Value Added Resellers who provide a broad spectrum of eircode specialist services to businesses. Since last July there have been almost 3.7m million lookups on the online Eircode finder, with average daily hits running at 20,000, showing a high level of consumer and commercial awareness of the new system.

Insofar as the 2014 appropriation account is concerned, total gross spend under the Vote in 2014 was just under €425 million, some €15m below the budget allocation of €440m. The underspend is primarily due to slower than expected expenditure on the Trading Online Voucher Scheme, energy research programmes, and broadcasting expenditure due to lower than forecast TV licence receipts.

1 I would like to briefly set out some of the key projects supported from the Vote in 2014.

There was expenditure in 2014 of nearly €46 million on communications, multimedia developments and the information society. This expenditure was primarily on the Postcodes Project, the National Broadband Scheme and the second level schools broadband programme. Another milestone was met in 2014 when 269 schools in Counties Carlow, Cork, Kerry, Kilkenny, Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow were provided with 100Mbps broadband connectivity bringing high speed connectivity to all post-primary schools under the three phases of the national rollout programme.

Some €86m was spent in the energy sector in 2014. €64m of this was by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland on the delivery of energy efficiency upgrades. The schemes funded include residential grants, grants to low income energy consumers through the warmer homes scheme and group community projects. During the year over 22,000 buildings, including 12,000 low-income homes benefitted from an energy efficiency upgrade. Government investment in these schemes supports 3,500 jobs on average, once again highlighting the importance of the State’s involvement in this area.

Expenditure in 2014 in the Broadcasting area amounted to €239.5 million. Of this €178.8 million was paid in grant aid to RTE in respect of the revenue from the sale of television licences. A total of €25 million of exchequer funding and licence fee funding of €9.2 million was provided to TG4 to deliver on programme commitments. €14.1 million in licence fee funding was provided to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland to support the audio and audio-visual media sector in the production of new television and radio programmes of all genres on Irish culture, heritage and experience, and programmes in the Irish language.

2 Just over €28 million was paid to meet the administration and operational costs of Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) and the Loughs Agency. This funding enabled IFI to undertake over 180,000 patrol hours and over 7,500 environmental inspections.

€ 7.4 million was spent on various geoscience projects, including the mapping of Lough Swilly, Mulroy Bay, Broadhaven Bay, Blacksod, Killary and Tralee, as well as offshore West Clare, Cork and outer Galway Bay under INFOMAR, the national seabed survey project.

The Department’s administrative budget has been significantly reduced from €40 million in 2007 to just over €21.2 million in 2014. Notwithstanding this, the Department has continued to oversee and implement a wide range of new and existing programmes, undertake regulatory functions and provide policy advice across its wide brief.

I have separately provided the Committee with the Vote outturn figures for 2015. These indicate gross expenditure of €400m in 2015 compared to €424.7m in the 2014 outturn. A breakdown of the 2015 outturn by subhead has also been provided.

I look forward to assisting the Committee with questions it has in relation to the issues under consideration today.