Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 October 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Overspend on the Health Budget 2018: Discussion

9:00 am

Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

Perhaps I am not explaining it well. The calculation of the figure initially was based on working out the cost of the minimum services we had to provide, including services that were demand-driven such as emergency department and disability residential services. We felt that even if we were to decide we could not and would not fund them, they still would occur. When we did the arithmetic, the savings required came to €346 million. We then set out a programme. We identified the first €77 million to be save and it has largely been delivered. A sum of €60 million in savings is not inconsequential, although I know that it is a lot less than €346 million. We identified a sum of €119 million. We did not identify specific savings areas but were targeting corporate type spending, as we said. We are far behind where we would like to be in reviewing the figure of €1.2 billion. The last piece was €150 million for jointly governed initiatives to be identified more in the policy or longer term programme space between us and the Department.

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