Mr. Seamus Coffey:

Departments' individual spending is not the level of detail that the council goes into. We have seen the overall level of spending drift upwards in recent years. Aggregate levels of expenditure ceilings are set out and then as one gets closer to the year, those ceilings are increased within the year, as we have seen recently. That is the drift that we see. We do not pin down the actual source or cause of that spending drift. Our mandate is to look at the overall package of what is happening. One could probably look at the Supplementary Estimates and have details of where the additional spending is going but our key concern is the overall package and the fact that pre-announced plans are not being adhered to.