Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a question relating to health spending in particular. It was quite frustrating for us, as an Opposition party, when we were trying to get an estimate of the likely overrun in health. That overrun was not calculated by the Department of Health or the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform until days before the budget. They did not have the information. It was not that they were not providing it; they just did not have it. They came up with a Supplementary Estimate of €655 million, €625 million of which is current expenditure. The November report published yesterday shows that we have already surpassed that by €74 million. The current expenditure is now at €699 million above profile as opposed to €625 million. If just a couple of weeks ago they could not figure out what expenditure would be in six weeks' time, how are we ever going to get this right?

The excellent table on page 88 of the IFAC report shows that the overruns intensify at the latter end of the year. We are likely to see an even higher December figure, which could mean that we need a second Supplementary Estimate in health for the last eight weeks of the year. That is not a joke. We are probably overrunning the health budget again by another €100 million. This is because the Department of Health is not, as IFAC puts it, "credibly" budgeting in the first place. We describe this as an overrun but in reality there was no credible budget for health in the first place.