Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Essentially, we made a prudent estimate to make sure all claims would be covered. When one has demand-led schemes, as in the Department of Health, one essentially makes a guesstimate at the start of each year on the basis of patterns that have emerged in recent years. In some cases we have got them wrong and the Estimates are either slightly too high or slightly too low. On the previous subhead we got it wrong in that we were €6 million short and in this case the Estimate was slightly too high. We were out by €4.8 million with the overall net numbers, which in percentage terms is quite small for demand-led schemes. It is approximately 2%.