Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The issue that focused our minds on this is not ultimately the minute percentile at which the overall Department of Public Expenditure budget might be at the end of year, whether it is 1% or 2% under or over. The issue is that if there is an overhang of €100 million to €200 million in a Department going into the last quarter, there is an impact on a section of that Department with a budget of, for example, €12 million, which then must be hit and there is a proportionality case. This was the case last year with home helps in that the budget for home helps was €12 million, but a saving of €150 million had to be found. That gobbles up the home help budget for the year.