John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish the witnesses and their officials a happy Christmas and thank them for their public service and their regular attendance here. I have a couple of questions.

To paraphrase, it seems that when the Government has it, it spends it. That seems to be the message the witnesses are conveying. I have a number of questions about the health spending. I think there is an expectation, notwithstanding what Mr. Barnes said, that when there is a serious overrun, that one particular aspect of health spending may account for it. It might be a matter of dealing with the trolley crisis or accident, emergency departments or whatever else. When one drills down into the spending, however, it looks like there is an equal distribution of this overrun right across the health budget, which seems to imply that the Department of Health is becoming used to overruns and is building them into its annual budgets. There is no one big chunk in health accounting for the overrun; each section within health seems to be getting an equal share of the overrun. Could the witnesses comment on this?

We are almost at full employment. The social protection budget has not declined correspondingly; in fact, it has increased. Do the witnesses have a comment on this? We are just lucky that additional 11th month windfall in corporation tax was not known to the Government at budget time. I am neither an economist nor an accountant and I am not great with figures but I remember the pain of the past, and we are back to overruns and underestimates. Do the witnesses have any handle yet on how corporation tax is being underestimated at such a scale by the Department of Finance?

The witnesses are not mind readers or crystal ball gazers, but why do they think a Government would not factor in a Christmas bonus payment for 2019?

Since last April, everyone who has come before the Committee on Budgetary Oversight - whether the IFAC, the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, the Minister or any other agencies or witnesses - has highlighted four or five themes, one of which is our over-reliance on corporation tax. Do the witnesses think the Government has done anything in this budget, aside from the rainy day fund, to address this in a tangible way? The other measure that has been highlighted is carbon tax. The third is petrol and diesel equalisation. The Government fudged these two the day after a major climate change report reinforced the urgency of taking measures to deal with it. What is the witnesses' response to this?

My next question concerns what Mr. Coffey talked about. He mentioned oversight and the need for increased monitoring. Which Department's responsibility is this? We invited the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform before the committee and before the IFAC came in. We have correspondence from the Department stating that, having considered the matter carefully, the health budget is not really a matter for it but, rather, for the Department of Health. Either we have responded or we are going to respond. Who do the witnesses have in mind as having this oversight and invigilation responsibility when it comes to overruns in the health budget? The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, in his budget speech indicated that he would have the Minister, Deputy Simon Harris, into his office regularly over 2019 to check out how the budget is going. What kind of structures do the witnesses think we can put in place?

Mr. Coffey has hinted at my final point. This overrun pattern is becoming contagious. It is not applying only to health; it is now also applying to education and justice. What advices or response do the witnesses have to that?