Tag Archives: capital expenditure

WI funding

Posted on Thursday 22 October 2015 | Leave a comment

The cuts in funding to Waterways Ireland have been covered here many times. Now, thanks to the invaluable KildareStreet, we have official information on the matter from the Minister for Fairytales. A young chap called Martin Heydon [who has annoying automatically changing pics on his website], FG TD for Kildare South, put this written question to the minister:

To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the funding provided by her Department to Waterways Ireland in each of the past five years; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36691/15]

The minister, Heather Humphreys, FG TD for Cavan-Monaghan, wrote:

Waterways Ireland is co-funded by my Department and the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) in Northern Ireland. The current expenditure of the body is funded 85% by my Department and 15% by DCAL, which reflects the distribution of the navigable waterways in each jurisdiction. Capital expenditure is funded 100% in the jurisdiction in which the capital works are carried out.

The amount of funding allocated to Waterways Ireland from my Department’s Vote for each of the years from 2011 to 2015 is set out in the following table.

Year €m
2011 €30.300m
2012 €27.099m
2013 €25.463m
2014 €24.183m
2015 €23.426m

This is useful because, since 2011, the annual budget figure for North South Cooperation has not been broken down between Waterways Ireland and the language shamrock. Last time it was, WI got about 60% of the current expenditure total and almost all the capital. We’ve had to wait for WI’s annual reports to find how much it got two years earlier.

So it’s useful to have these figures, but they would have been even more useful if the minister had distinguished between current and capital expenditure.

From the Multi-Annual Capital Investment Framework, it seems that WI got €3,368,000 for RoI capital spending in 2015. Subtracting that from the minister’s 2015 figure of €23,426,000 suggests that WI’s current spending budget for RoI in 2015 is €20,058,000, which is less than my rough estimate of 60% of the NSCoop total (€35,072,000 X 0.6 = €21,043,200).

In 2011, the Estimates figures showed that WI was to get €6 million for capital expenditure. Subtracting that from the minister’s figure for 2011, €30,300,000, leaves €24,300,000 for current spending in that year.

I haven’t cross-checked that with WI’s accounts, and I could be wrong in other ways: feel free to add a comment below if you can help to correct these figures.

What I make of it is that

  • total RoI spending on Waterways Ireland in 2015 was 77% of the 2011 figure
  • capital spending was down from €6,000,000 to €3,368,000, a cut of almost 44%
  • current spending was down from €24,300,000 to €20,058,000, a cut of 17.5%.

Clearly, Waterways Ireland would benefit from having new sources of income outside the control of the central exchequer. Perhaps Mr Heydon could persuade the canal-based boat-owners of Co Kildare to pay higher charges?

Capital expenditure

I said above that capital spending was down from €6,000,000 in 2011 to €3,368,000 for 2015, a cut of almost 44%.

However, it had been €11,000,000 in 2008, whence the cut is over 69%; the 2016 figure is less than 25% of the 2008.

It is clear therefore that the government does not see investment in waterways as being productive, either of economically desirable results (eg tourism earnings, jobs) or of politically desirable benefits for its TDs.

I wonder therefore why one of its TDs has drawn attention to the matter.

Grim oop north

Something similar has happened in Norn Iron, where an MLA of the minister’s party has asked a question about Waterways Ireland, whose HQ is in his constituency.

Another young chap, one Phil Flanagan (who seems to have joined Sinn Féin seven days before being elected as an MLA. Could that be right?), has asked two questions of the (Sinn Féin) Minister for Marching Bands:

  • AQW 50030/11-16: To ask the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure to detail the amounts in (i) financial terms; and (ii) percentage terms of the budget in Waterways Ireland that is set aside for pension payments for former staff; and whether this is comparable with other bodies.
  • AQW 50029/11-16: To ask the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure how the value of the Euro has affected the budget of Waterways Ireland in each of the last three years.

I look forward to reading the answers.

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Posted in Canals, Economic activities, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Modern matters, Operations, People, Politics, waterways, Waterways management

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WI and the RoI budget for 2016

Posted on Wednesday 14 October 2015 | 1 comment

Budget documents [available here] include the Part IV Estimates for Public Services 2016 [PDF]. The Summary of Gross Expenditure (Capital and Current) by Ministerial Vote Group shows that the Department of Fairytales [aka Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht], RoI parent of Waterways Ireland, is to get an increase in its budget.

Its forecast outturn for 2015 matches its estimate for the year at €277,434,000, of which €215,854,000 is current and €61,580,000 is capital spending. However, the estimates for 2016 show €234,430,000 current + €76,000,000 capital = €310,430,000 total, an increase of €32,996,000. Current spending is up 8.6% and capital by 23.4%; total spending is up by 11.9%. Perhaps the extra €14,420,000 in capital spending is to extend Saunderson’s Sheugh to Clones?

Skipping the numerous tables that repeat more or less the same gen in different ways, and skipping too the unimportant government departments, we zoom forward to the details of the Department of Fairytales estimates.

But there we find, alas, that while the department as a whole has secured lots of extra lolly — and it’s going to be shovelling 18% more to the luvvies [Arts, Culture and Film], 11% more to heritage and 3% more to the BéalBochters — it intends to cut spending on North-South Cooperation, which is where Waterways Ireland gets its money.

The 2015 estimate for NSCoop current expenditure was €35,072,000; the 2016 estimate is €34,925,000, which is a cut of only about half of one per cent. But capital spending on NSCoop is down almost 20%, from €3,487,000 to €2,799,000, and total spending down 2% from €38,559,000 to €37,724,000.

The NSCoop figures are “subject to the North-South Ministerial Council”, which means that the (southern, Fine Gael) Minister for Fairytales has to persuade the (northern, Sinn Féin) Minister for Marching Bands that the cross-border language and waterways bodies aren’t getting any increase in their funding from the Free State, at least not while there is an election to be won. However, HM Devolved Administration didn’t seem too keen on allocating extra money to waterways last time I looked.

Regular readers will not need to be reminded that 85% of WI’s current budget is supplied by the RoI government and 15% by the NI administration, while capital expenditure is paid for by the state in which it occurs.

The estimates figures as shown don’t tell us the precise impact on Waterways Ireland’s current budget: the money is divided between WI and the language shamrock but the document doesn’t tell us which gets how much. [The last time a breakdown was given was in 2011, when WI got roughly 60% of the total.] However, most of the department’s NSCoop capital expenditure is undertaken by WI, and little or none of it by the language shamrock, so we can say that the 20% cut in NSCoop capital spending means a 20% cut in capital spending on waterways in the Free State.

The breakdown of the Multi-Annual Capital Investment Framework confirms that: in 2015 €3,368,000 of the €3,487,000 NSCoop capital budget (96.5%) went to WI, and in 2016 WI will get €2,680,000 of the €2,799,000 NSCoop capital budget (95.7%). I imagine that the language folk prefer sitting i dtóin an tí and don’t want fancy buildings.

WI’s capital budget for RoI is down from €11,000,000 in 2008.

According to the Multi-Annual Capital Investment Framework 2016 to 2021 (Table 1), the Department of Fairytales as a whole is getting an unusually large amount, €76,000,000, of Exchequer Capital Funding in 2016; the total is to fall back to €45 million in 2017 and €43 million in 2018, before rising to €46 million in each of the years 2018, 2020 and 2021. So, in a year in which the department is getting much more money for capital spending, NSCoop and, specifically, waterways are getting significantly less.

Looking at the breakdown (Table 2), it seems that the big changes in the department’s capital spending are:

  • a major cut in the grant-in-aid to the Crawford Gallery (€12,100,000 to €6,100,000)
  • cuts of €1,312,000 to the National Parks and Wildlife Service and €1,000,000 to Údarás na Gaeltachta
  • a cut of €688,000 to WI
  • an extra €1,150,000 for Teach an Phiarsaigh under the Decade of Centenaries heading
  • a new thing called Built Heritage Jobs Leverage Scheme gets €2,000,000
  • another new thing called Cork Event Centre gets €5,000,000
  • and, the biggest of the lot, Decade of Centenaries 1912–1922 gets an extra €15,270,000, to bring its capital budget to €28,800,000, by far the largest item in the budget.

There are a few other minor changes, but the increased allocation of €15,270,000 to the main Decade of Centenaries item has more than swallowed the extra €14,420,000 allocated to the department. Three other significant items — Teach an Phiarsaigh, the Cork Event Centre and the Built Heritage Jobs Leverage Scheme, which between them have been given an extra €8,150,000 — have been funded by the reduced allocations to the Crawford Gallery, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Údarás na Gaeltachta and Waterways Ireland.

So there’s no money for Sinn Féin’s beloved Clones Sheugh.

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Posted in Built heritage, Canals, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Ireland, Irish waterways general, Modern matters, Operations, Politics, Restoration and rebuilding, Shannon, Sources, Tourism, Ulster Canal, waterways, Waterways management

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Modern management

Posted on Tuesday 26 November 2013 | 5 comments

I’ve just read the minutes (they call ’em joint communiqués, to be posh) of all the North South Ministerial Council Inland Waterways meetings since northsouthery got going again in 2007.

After a bit of catching up in the first couple of years, the NSMC has usually managed to “note” WI’s Annual Reports and Accounts about six months after the end of the year to which they refer: the accounts for 2008 were noted in 7 months, 2009 in 5, 2010 in 7, 2011 in 7 and 2012 in 6. But “noting” doesn’t mean approving: various other bods, including two Comptrollers and Auditors General, then have to look at them, so the citizenry doesn’t get to see the accounts for many months afterwards: the report and accounts for 2012 are still not available.

Nothing to see there, then: both WI and the NSMC appear to be doing their bit as fast as could reasonably be expected. But what is odd is the delay in noting or approving plans and budgets. Knowing litle of management science, I had the naive idea that managers would be working to approved plans and budgets from the start of the year, but WI usually doesn’t get approval until the year is almost over. I do not know why that is.

WI’s business plan for 2008 was approved in October 2007, which is reasonable, although it seems to have been revised in July 2008. But the plans for 2009 and 2010 were not approved until 11 months into the year, that for 2011 until 10 months and that for 2012 until June 2013, six months after the end of the year. I realise that forecasting is difficult, but retrospective planning is surely less than useful.

The same delays apply to the budgets for 2010, 2011 and 2012. So the June 2013 meeting of the NSMC approved or noted:

  • the business plan for 2012 (which had ended six months earlier)
  • the budget for 2012
  • the annual report for 2012
  • the draft accounts for 2012.

I do hope that someone checked to ensure that all the documents accorded with one another: it would be really embarrassing if they didn’t. But as a management exercise this seems to be somewhat less than useful.

The same meeting also

… noted progress on the development of the 2013 Business Plan and budget. Following approval by Sponsor Departments and Finance Ministers the plan will be brought forward for approval at a future NSMC meeting.

It is good to know that, six months into the year, there was progress on the business plan and budget for that year. The minutes of the November meeting don’t mention the 2013 business plan and budget (but do, I am pleased to note, mention the 2014 versions), but there was a disturbing item of information on the previous day, 19 November 2013. Brendan Howlin, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, replied to a written question from Gerry Adams [SF, Louth], saying inter alia

The 2013 Budget allocation to the Body are subject to on-going discussion by the two Sponsor Departments.

This is November; 88% of the year has passed and the Irish budget for 2013 was approved long ago — yet WI still hasn’t been told its budget for 2013. WTF is going on?

I note that the same applies to the other north-south body or bodies that share the [RoI] Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and the [NI] Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure as sponsors. An Foras Teanga, which includes Foras na Gaeilge and Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch, likewise still has its 2013 budget under discussion by the two departments.

I have asked DAHG about this, and will no doubt receive a full and frank reply in due course. In the meantime, I can only speculate. Is it possible that one minister wants to spend very much more or less on waterways than the other does? As the total current expenditure is fixed at 85%/15%, it seems to me that one side might very well come up with a figure that the other didn’t like.

Is it possible that DCAL, run by Mr Adams’s party colleague Carál Ní Chuilín, is more keen on cross-border bodies than is DAHG, run by Fine Gael minister Jimmy Deenihan? Or are both of them struggling to find savings to pay for the Clones Sheugh, or at least as a deposit for the SEUPB?

Or could it simply be that WI is having great difficulty in cutting its expenditure to fit within the limits imposed by the RoI budget?

 

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Posted in Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Ireland, Irish waterways general, Operations, People, Politics, Sources, Ulster Canal, waterways, Waterways management

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