John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her opening statement. I will make two comments before opening up the discussion to members of the committee. The changes the Minister made to the presentation on pages 3 and 4, showing the figures with the Christmas bonus stripped back, are very useful because they mean we can see exactly what is happening.

I thank the Minister for that. It is also worth acknowledging the work of the staff in the Department who are tasked with preparing the Estimates. As the Minister rightly said, the variance in terms of the output in comparison to the Estimates across most subheads is very small which means that somebody is doing a good job of work. That being said, I am sure that colleagues will have issues and questions. In general terms, in the global figures presented there is close correlation between the Estimates and the outturns. Those working on the figure and the projections have been doing a good job.

Deputy O'Dea is first.