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

Chairman, can I just finish/ I will finish off answering the question but I am available and will spend the afternoon here to answer any questions that the Deputy may have. What is compounding the overrun is that our expectations on income that would be coming into our hospitals have not been met. We have a lot of work to do now, which we are in the process of completing, to understand fully what that is, and what the impacts will be for budget 2019.

On the Deputy's latter question on housing, the housing budget overall, as part of Rebuilding Ireland and the national development plan, allocates a further €7.5 billion for social housing. The housing budget for 2018 is a figure of €1.8 billion which is 38% higher than the provisional outturn in 2017.

On the Deputy's final question on whether the amount of money that will be available for housing in next year's budget will go up, the answer is yes.