Minister’s Brief

With DPER, it has to help progress the outstanding actions from the Fiscal Transparency
Assessment viz accrual accounting for Departments, consolidation of public sector accounts.
The Finance Unit is responsible for the Internal Financial Management and Reporting
activities of the Department and, on a shared services basis, for DPER and its associated
Votes. This includes the Annual Budget Estimate, the Revised Estimate, Budget Profiling,
Budgetary management, Expenditure Reporting, Annual Appropriation Account, audit liaison,
attendance at Oireachtas Committee (the Select Finance Committees and the Public Accounts
Committee) and associated briefings. The unit also produces the Appropriation Account for
the Superannuation and Secret Service Votes. It also engages with DPER in relation to
Estimates allocations and various briefing requests and other Offices in the Finance Vote
Group (Revenue, Appeal Commissioner, C&AG) in relation to briefing needs.
Detail:
The Department’s Accounts Branch looks after the accounting needs of the Department’s
Vote as well as those of DPER and some votes under DPER (namely superannuation, OGP,
NSSO and the Secret Service vote) totalling some €760 million.
It also provides services to the President’s Office and an accounting platform for the
Ombudsman’s Office.
It includes the Exchequer Section, which deals with the transactions on the Central Fund and
produces the monthly Exchequer Statement and the annual Finance Accounts. In 2015, the
volume of transactions processed by the Exchequer section was €117.2 billion. That section
interacts with the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General in order to obtain the
necessary credits for expenditure from the Central Fund. It also processes transactions on 14
other non-voted accounts and compiles annual accounts for most of them. The PMG banking
function, in conjunction with the Central Bank, provides a banking service (essentially funding
accounts in commercial banks) to all other Departments and Offices with Votes, except for
the Office of Public Works.
The Accountant’s Branch, the Office of the PMG and the Finance Unit were among the
Department of Finance operations decentralised to Tullamore in 2006.
At that point there were over 70 staff (from total Department staffing of 120 approx. in
Tullamore) in the operation.
Recently Department staff numbers in Tullamore have been reducing as functions (Payroll,
Pension payments by the PMGs) have been transferred to the NSSO, which is under DPER.
Headcount in the financial operation in Tullamore is now 34 (32.9 full time equivalents).
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