Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Okay. I ask the witness to reflect on that. If he has a system that overspends by vast amounts of money every year - it did not always do it but it does now - and nobody ever loses his or her job and nobody is ever sanctioned in any way for it, he is not sending out the right signal in terms of this having to end. This has changed. Professor Brendan Drumm wrote an open letter to The Irish Timespointing out that in his tenure between 2005 and 2010 the HSE operated within budget except when the Government of the day announced new initiatives to be launched in that year. The spending beyond the allocated budget was for new initiatives, but the budget as allocated met the services under the plan. Now we have moved to a situation where it has become normal that the HSE overspends by €600 million or €700 million. The witness said no provisioning is done, so he might reflect on that.

There have been overruns of between €500 million and €700 million over the last five years. At the start of each year did the witnesses believe that the budgets would be met and that the HSE would operate within budget?