Category: Expenditure databases

Thanks to Catherine Halloran of the Daily Star for sharing the results of this FOI with us. Catherine asked for the number of Christmas cards printed by the Oireachtas printing presses for each TD and Senator, broken down on a individual basic for each TD and Senator and a full breakdown of printing costs in 2012, broken down for each TD and Senator. A total €276,133.96 was spent on printing facilities for members. Here are details of the release:

The top 20 Members:

Member Amount
Richard Bruton € 18,935.17
Robert Dowds € 11,694.80
Regina Doherty € 9,180.03
Richard Boyd Barrett € 6,865.95
Mary Mitchell OConnor € 6,114.87
Lucinda Creighton € 4,831.80
Alan Farrell € 4,817.51
Philip Hogan € 4,794.51
Sandra McLellan € 4,625.99
Micheal Martin € 4,584.02
Patrick ODonovan € 4,331.31
Niall Collins € 4,070.34
Derek Keating € 3,939.11
Robert Troy € 3,866.18
Martin Conway € 3,855.58
Mark Daly € 3,563.76
Martin Heydon € 3,368.14
Patrick Nulty € 3,304.75
Frances Fitzgerald € 3,284.32
Marcella Corcoran Kennedy € 3,187.62

And the full results:

Data

Data

This is the breakdown by party membership:

This data contains all expenditure data by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform for the period from inception to June 2012.

In total it contains €21,228,431.30 of expenditure, on the basis of 238 vendors who invoiced the Department for 1,565 separate invoices. It does not appear to include Purchase Orders, which the Department publishes proactively here (albeit in PDF format and only for orders over €20,000). Much of the spending involves the normal day to day spending by any government Department but gives an insight to citizens as to how public money is spent. It does not include expenses claimed or salary data.

Download the data here. (File -> Download)

This spreadsheet contains individual invoices with the largest first:

This is a breakdown per vendor name with the largest first:

Following an FOI request I obtained Department of Finance expenditure for 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. The data reveals spending of €99,698,862.33 in 15,360 rows. The largest single outgoings were to charities such as the Rehab Group and Gael Linn using lottery money. The Exchequer receives lottery monies directly from An Post National Lottery Company Limited – the Department then disburses the funds to other Departments or holds on to some of the money itself.

If you’re wondering where all the money paid out to advisers like Merrill Lynch and Rothschild is, that money was paid through the NTMA. The top single (not pivoted) outgoings over the four years were:

Amount Account Remarks Purchase Order Detail Company
€ 5,644,928.91 Charitable Lotteries Scheme, Rehab Group 4477
€ 5,625,488.26 Charitable Lotteries Scheme, Rehab Group 4477
€ 5,185,163.72 Charitable Lotteries Scheme, Rehab Group 4477
€ 2,000,000.00 ESRI One off payment, Econ. & Social Research Inst.(ESRI) 1284
€ 1,230,000.00 April – July 09 Grant-in-Aid, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 1,180,005.00 Current Expenditure,Capital Expenditure, SEUPB Peace 3778
€ 1,154,140.00 current drawdown,capital drawdown, SEUPB Peace 3778
€ 964,995.00 PEACE II Drawdown May 2008,PEACE II Drawdown May 2008, SEUPB Peace 3778
€ 925,000.00 Jan – March Grand in Aid, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 925,000.00 Grant-in-Aid Aug – Oct 09, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 885,000.00 current expenditure,capital expenditure, SEUPB Peace 3778
€ 850,000.00 Grant-in-Aid (Jan – March), Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 850,000.00 Grant-In-Aid April – June, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 850,000.00 Grant-in-aid July – Sept 2010, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 850,000.00 July – Sept 2010 Grant in aid, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 733,370.00 Current Programme Expenditure,Capital Programme Expenditure, SEUPB Peace 3778
€ 666,251.00 Peace III 3.1 current,Peace III 3.1 capital, SEUPB Peace III 8266
€ 657,500.00 Current Expenditure,capital expenditure, SEUPB-INTERREG 7027
€ 650,000.00 Jan/Feb 08 Grant in Aid, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 650,000.00 March & April Grant-in-Aid, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 650,000.00 May & June 08 Grant-in-Aid, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 650,000.00 Grant-in-Aid July & August 08, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 650,000.00 Sept and October 08, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 650,000.00 Nov/Dec Grant-in-Aid, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 628,000.00 Current expenditure,capital expenditure, SEUPB Peace III 8266
€ 627,500.00 INTERREG IIIA drawdown May ’08,INTERREG IIIA drawdown May ’08, SEUPB-INTERREG 7027
€ 620,000.00 Grant-in-Aid Final Balance 09, Institute of Public Administration 1,105
€ 618,797.45 Pension Levy Ain A DPER (307 PEAR) 11297
€ 610,413.50 Charitable Lotteries Scheme, Gael Linn 4476
€ 596,977.78 Charitable Lotteries Scheme, Gael Linn 4476
€ 590,000.00 Current expenditure,capital expenditure, SEUPB-INTERREG 7027
€ 564,034.40 Charitable Lotteries Scheme, Gael Linn 4476
€ 550,000.00 current drawdown,capital drawdown, SEUPB-INTERREG 7027
€ 545,000.00 Current Programme Spend,Capital Programme Spend, SEUPB-INTERREG 7027
€ 520,000.00 Re: Cork Créche, Suspense 08, O.P.W. Building and Maintenance 3726

Another interesting little nugget is the spending on lunches for the visits of the IMF in 2009 and 2010. The preferred venue for food was the Pearl Brasserie:

The full data (download here)

Late last year I asked for the follow information from the Department of the Taoiseach:

1) A ‘datadump’, (ie a copy/export of) the Oracle financial management system in use by the Department covering the time period for 2010. This datadump should contain data relating only to the following subheads:

Travel and subsistence (A2)
Training and development and incidental expenses (A3)
Postal and Telecommunications services (A4)
Office equipment and external IT services (A5)
Office premises expenses (A6)
Consultancy services and value for money and policy reviews (A7)
National economic and social (B)
Commemoration initiatives (C)
Tribunal of Inquiry (Payments to Messrs CJ Haughey and M Lowry) (D)

This should include the following column heads (ie fields)
Payment date; Subhead item; Cost Centre; Vendor Name; Invoice number; Line description; Amount.

Subhead A1 covers salary data, which did not form part of this request. While the data was released in a physical hard copy format (yes printed out and posted to me), the total sum of non-salary expenditure should amount to €6.465m. Because I have not converted the documents into spreadsheets, and because some lines are entirely blacked out, I have not been able to perform a SUM calculation on the spreadsheets.

The data contains spending of all types, including telephones, post, lunches, travel, bus fares, road tolls, flights, hotels, taxis, ferries, catering, photography, books, newspapers, bank charges, couriers, tea/coffee, legal charges, uniform cleaning, footwear, mobile phones, photocopying, office equipment, stationery, cleaning, cleaning supplies, and more.