Mr. Michael Tutty:

The Deputy referred to the phrase "when we have money, we spend it". I have been through many decades in the Department of Finance looking at this happening time after time. While the Minister would say at this point that we are not spending all that we could spend, it is still spending more than we think is appropriate at this point in the cycle. The Government also says, "All the other parties tell us we should be doing more, so how can we avoid doing it?" However, one of the reasons the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council was set up was to try to stop this cycle of spending more and more in good times and then having to have big cutbacks in bad times. We must try to push this view and convince both Parliament and the people that there is a better way that could save us from the big cutbacks when we inevitably get into a slowdown. Even though we would not say that what is going on now is hugely over-expansionary compared with some of the things that happened in the past, it is still moving in the same direction as we had been moving in the past and not learning from the past.

The Christmas bonus was never put into the Estimates. No matter how many times officials and people from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council said it must be put in because it would be spent, Governments of all hues left it out and hoped there would be savings during the year that would finance it rather than showing it in the budget. They still spend it even if there are no savings. We think that long-standing practice should stop. A budget is not realistic if it does not make provision for it. However, another year and another budget come and it is still left out of the figures.

With regard to the widespread increases in health expenditure, we have not looked in detail at where exactly the increases are. We are not aware of specific increases or particular areas where there are big increases. It may be right there are just widespread overruns in all areas, which is what happens if no budget constraints are imposed. If people see the budget they are given every year can be exceeded and there are no consequences they will inevitably be lax in implementing budget controls.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is probably a bit removed from the day-to-day supervision of what is happening in the Department of Health and other Departments. That is why we have line Departments which should be looking at it in detail. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform should start setting down how the control should be exercised to make sure the Department of Health gets the information from the HSE and the HSE gets the information from all the bodies under it aegis on how expenditure is going every month and every quarter. It should then feed that information to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Undoubtedly, the Department of Health should have primary control over the budget it has been given to run the health services.