Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

No; I wish to stay on this topic.

With the greatest of respect, that is not a reasonable answer. Demographics are predictable and should never lead to overruns. We know how many people are living in the country and have quite a good idea of how many will be in it next year. Demographics are not unforeseen and are planned for in any budget. Therefore, demographic changes cannot be the issue. While there have been overruns, based on the 11 years of information we have available, the trend has been significantly upwards. There are always unanticipated events in healthcare, but there are unanticipated events in everything, including transport or in running a coffee shop. Anyone who budgets for the year, be it for a coffee shop or a €17 billion healthcare system, makes provisions. One includes discretionary amounts of money to deal with unforeseen events such as storms, flu outbreaks or whatever else. Therefore, I do not think it is reasonable to say demographic changes are the reason for an overrun as they are entirely predictable and can be budgeted for. My question is: why are the overruns twice to three times more than what they used to be in the past four years? The wheels are coming off. Something is going more wrong than usual and my question is what is it? What has happened in the past four or five years that is different and leading to the multiples in the scale of the overruns?