Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 21 September 2016

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Current and Capital Expenditure: Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform

2:00 pm

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

I cannot give a figure for the auditors available within Departments but within my Department I have a large team of officials working with each Department every day on spending plans and what is coming out.

The Deputy referred to the manner in which the Department deals with certain service delivery issues. We must have realistic estimates for the expenditure plans of every Department. It should be possible to produce realistic estimates because the economic environment is much more normal than it was in previous years. My officials work with all other Departments to ensure their plans are deployed.

In the specific area of health, we review the performance of each hospital group by examining the funding available to it and comparing that with the output it is expected deliver. The information is presented by the Health Service Executive and reviewed in detail by Cabinet sub-committees. We know how much funding is allocated to each sector of the health service and to each hospital group. We examine the performance of each hospital group by comparing real output with the outputs it is supposed to deliver. The Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, and I have agreed that, given the additional €500 million I have made available to the Department of Health this year in addition to the many hundreds of millions of euro provided last year, we expect expenditure by the Department to be on budget this year. We also want to plan for next year on the basis of what I hope will be a normal budget for this year.

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