Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy did the novel thing of asking me not to interrupt before I had even done so or considered doing so. He did something that was not novel by accusing me of putting spin on something when, of course, he is attempting to do that himself. If he ever has the opportunity to be involved in an Estimates process, and I hope he has so that he has the opportunity to reconcile his rhetoric with the reality of doing an Estimates process, he will see that the kind of briefing I received on the Department of Health and the issues it was raising were exactly the same as any other Estimates process I am involved in with other large-spending Departments.

If I look at the ELS and the different bids, and I am sure this information is contained in the documents to which the Deputy has access via an FOI request, the funding that the Department of Health sought from an ELS perspective declined. It went down. It started off at €2.4 billion and ended up at €1.74 billion. It decreased. It is an ongoing feature of the engagement we have at budget time that a big discussion takes place about the level of the ELS.

The Deputy is looking at the one figure within a particular budget he wants to look at but without locating the figure in the reality that we are spending €22.5 billion overall on our health service at the moment. That money is needed. That €22.5 billion is an increase of over €7 billion on where we have been in recent years. The Deputy is entirely entitled to make a point regarding differences on the ELS that run to many hundreds of millions of euro. We had a discussion and negotiation about that during the Estimates process. However, it is in the context of a budget of €22.5 billion. If the Deputy is ever involved in these kinds of discussions, and he may well be, he will get a briefing from his officials that will make a case for larger amounts of money. If he is ever dealing with a party colleague or another colleague who is doing the job I am now doing, that colleague will receive a briefing note contending that the amount of money the Deputy is seeking is not available. Over a number of weeks, we then try to reconcile those two positions. That was what happened.