Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Okay, fine. Last year it was €250 million. If that was done for four years it would be €1 billion. It is pretty straightforward.

Also on increments, there is considerable talk about those at the higher end and that people on lower wages should not be hit on increments. While that may be true in some cases, it is not necessarily true for new entrants. Let us consider a teacher starting work on €28,000. If a graduate started in the private sector on a deal with a salary of €28,000, four months holidays, a permanent job from which he or she could not be removed and a very attractive pension, I would argue that person would not be devastated at not getting a 5% pay increase the following year. I believe we could be far more targeted.

When we looked at the Minister's expenditure proposals for this year, I made the point to him - in some cases he agreed - that across the board many areas under his remit, including stationery, travel and legal fees, are increasing year on year. At the margin all of those should at the very least not be increasing.

My final point relates to health, which may be outside the remit of this conversation but is very much within the remit of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. The schedule from the comprehensive review of expenditure shows a 2% reduction in health spend over two years, which is 1% per year. When adjusted for the young population, the analysis indicated that we have the second highest per capita spend on health in the world after the US. There is a massive opportunity for billions to be reduced with no detriment to service. The Minister has argued that his Department is very small, as it is, and it is very difficult to get much meaningful money out of that. In the Minister's broader remit, a 2% reduction in health for the period from 2012 to 2014, should be seriously reviewed.