Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To answer Deputy Brophy, we might discuss this again offline but I expect the Department of Finance to engage with the committee and give members any access to information or assistance it can. It is early days with this committee but it could have a role to play in the future. It will never be at the level of the budgetary committee that exists in US Congress, for example. That is a different system but the committee can have an enhanced role in helping us to form budgets and examine them afterwards.

There are mixed views as to whether we should stick with the annual budget but we will for now. I often wonder if it is maybe too dramatic to only make major financial decisions once a year. However, we make adjustments to different extents throughout the year. Next year, an additional €2.6 billion has been built in because of the announcement we made in Project Ireland 2040 that there would be a 25% increase in capital spending next year on housing, health, transport and so on. Some €1.5 billion has been announced. We announced that when we announced Project Ireland 2040. When the public sector pay deal was done, spending was announced for future years. Some €400 million is built in for pay restoration next year because of the deal that was done with trade unions. Some other changes will be announced during the year. The recalculation of the State contributory pension will have a cost next year. We introduce an annual budget and we make adjustments during the year. Perhaps they should be made quarterly in a more structured way. The upside of the annual budget cycle is that it focuses minds. When adjustments are done quarterly, it is easy to put them off for another quarter. When there is only one bite of the cherry, particularly with tax and welfare, it focuses minds. I have been through seven or eight budget cycles as a Minister. I have seen how it forces people to compromise and make decisions because there is a deadline. They may be put off if it was done quarterly. I have an open mind on that. I know other countries do not do the annual budget the way we do.

On the health service, Deputy Harty is right that we spend €16 billion a year on healthcare, which is among the highest in the world per head. That is on top of 20 years in which we spent more per head than the average country in the western world. Even during the recession, we spent more than average per head and now we are spending way more than average per head. The constant demand for more staff, resources and new buildings certainly cannot be the solution. It might be part of the solution but it is not the solution on its own. If that was the solution, it would have worked by now. The health budget is €3 billion a year higher than it was three years ago. There has been a huge increase in the budget. I recall a headline in The Sunday Business Postin the run in to the last general election which I took grave offence at. It is interesting in the context of what we have been talking about over the past few weeks. The headline was "No plan, no money and no vision". Two or three years later, there is a huge amount of money. We have a vision with Sláintecare and we have any number of plans, including national cancer strategies, national maternity strategies, clinical programmes and models of care. The failure has been to implement them efficiently. We need to do that now because the worst thing we can do is buy into this idea that we will solve all our problems by continuing to add more money and more staff. That has not worked. It might be part of a solution but it is not the solution on its own.

On the HSE board and why we have not done it up until now, we wanted to decide what sort of board it would be. The Sláintecare report says that we should bring back a board but it does not say any more than that - what sort of board it should be, if it should have a non-executive chairman or executive chairman, how it should be constituted and what role it should have. That is the kind of discussion that has been happening in government over the past few weeks. We should not go back to the HSE board as it was before it was abolished. I am not sure that worked well either. That is the gap. Sláintecare sets out that a HSE board should be set up but does not go any further into what the board should look like, how we should constitute it or what its role should be. That is what we have been deliberating on for the past while.

It will have to be different to a usual State board. I see how State boards work. For small organisations, a board that meets once a month, gets board papers and has an executive trot in in front of it can work. This is a different type of body. It has a massive budget of €16 billion with 110,000 staff. It cannot have the same board as a small agency. It needs to have more than a meeting once a month with some board papers in front of an executive. I know what executives are like. They just get through that meeting and come back next month. It needs to be something different and will need people who will give it significant time. It will have to be more than attending a board meeting every month. We should also not make the mistake of thinking that boards are panaceas to all our problems. The hepatitis C scandal was the worst in the history of the State, where healthy women and men were infected with hepatitis C or HIV by a State agency. The Blood Transfusion Service Board oversaw that. The Portlaoise breast cancer misdiagnosis scandal happened under the Midland Health Board. We should have a board but let us not make the mistake of thinking it will be the game-changer that some people are making it out to be.

On digital tax and the CCCTB, it is something that the Government just does not support. It is not in our interest. Our strong view is that national budgets should be paid for by national taxation and it is the role of member states to set their own taxes in that regard. Senator Horkan is correct to identify corporation tax as a potential risk. The European Commission, in its various country-specific reports about Ireland, recognises that as a risk. In the 2000s, a huge amount of our revenue came from stamp duty. When the property bubble burst, there was a huge hole in public finances. A potential risk now is the large amount of corporation tax that we receive from a relatively small number of companies. If they were to go into loss or fail for some reason, it would result in a serious hit to our revenue. That is not to say that we should not collect the taxes. It is still better that those companies are here in Ireland, paying tax, than not here at all, but we need to be wise to that risk.