Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

Clearly, as the Director General has indicated, hospital expenditure has fallen in recent years. The reality is that it has not fallen by a sufficient amount to keep pace with the fall in the budget reduction. As the Deputy said, at the end of March it was €63 million over budget. Despite the fact that the HSE provided an additional budget of €50 million this year to hospitals and despite the efforts made to more closely link budgets to that underlying cost, sufficient resources were not available either this year or last year to provide them with an amount equal to their previous year's actual expenditure. The hospitals had a significant financial challenge this year and at the end of March they were €60 million over budget. Significant efforts are under way to bring that around. We should acknowledge the assistance of the-----