‘Powerful case for caution’ spending corporate tax receipts, says Donohoe

The Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe said there was a “powerful case for the role of caution” when it came to spending corporate tax receipts.

“So much of our surplus for next year is made up out of corporate tax receipts,” he said.

“If you were to remove the corporate tax receipts from our surplus for next year, we would be left with either no surplus or a small surplus.”

He said Government would be concluding its discussions on the pre-summer part of the Budget process.

“And I believe that it’s of great importance that we don’t get to the point now of again spending money that might not always be available to us in ongoing decisions that you can only reverse at great social and economic cost,” he said.

The minister was speaking at the launch of the Public Service Performance Report for 2022, which features departmental-level breakdowns of key targets.

Among the statistics, the Department of Transport had carried out four of its target 17 inspections of port facilities, the Department of Agriculture had delivered 28.4% of its 8,000-hectare target for new forestry plantings, and An Garda Siochana had reached 22% of its target for the reassigning of gardai to policing duties.

Elsewhere, the Department of Health reported that 80 people were receiving intensive home care packages in 2022, which was 34% of its overall target.

In disability services, that department had facilitated less than a quarter of its target for movements of people from congregated to community settings.

Meanwhile, the department with responsibility for sport had paid out 20% of its 14.6 million euro target for large-scale sporting infrastructure projects.

The Public Appointments Service had been unable to deliver general grade assignments within target time frames in 71% of cases, while the Office of Public Works had substantially completed two flood relief schemes.

The figures also showed that the Department of Foreign Affairs reported it had received under 30% of its target for Twitter impressions to its DFA Human Rights and Disarmament and Non-Proliferation accounts in 2022.