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

Mr. Desmond made the point that the health sector is particularly complex. The education sector is pretty complex, as is social protection given the range of schemes involved and the variations that occur all the time. I imagine it would be hard to predict the social protection budget at the beginning of the year in terms of the number of people who will be in receipt of disability benefit and the number who will leave or join the live register. Then there is the plethora of schemes that only few in this House really understand. Despite this, the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection does not experience the level of overruns that occur in the health sector.