Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I need to say a few things about that and I will answer those very specific questions. When we talk about the health budget and the budget negotiations that were ongoing - I do not need to explain this to the Deputy because he was involved in it - the significant effort at the time involved dealing with current expenditure issues and the fact that we were facing and ultimately agreed a supplementary budget on current expenditure for the health service for €645 million. The overriding priority for me in budget 2019, and I accept for the Deputy and the Oireachtas, was stabilising current expenditure and making sure we addressed what was going to be an immediate shortfall in funding to provide services. That was my priority.

The Deputy spoke about the size of the fiscal space and the sum being larger than or a very large proportion of the available fiscal space. That ignores one fact, which is that during budget negotiations, I neither knew nor could have known the outcome of the ongoing process nor the cashflow. I could not possibly have known the impact of this in 2019, 2020 and 2021. This project will go out to 2023 when the hospital will open. Construction finishes in 2022. Until 9 November, it was not possible to know the impact in 2019 and 2020 or indeed any subsequent year. What people need to know, and freedom of information documents have shown this, is that I was actively seeking additional capital for the health service throughout budget negotiations. There is correspondence that journalists who made freedom of information requests have received and put in newspapers about me writing about the need for more capital for the health service. While neither I, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform nor anyone else could crystallise, because nobody knew the figures, the outcome of the commercial negotiations or the impact in terms of cashflow in each of the years, I was actively looking for more capital for the health service and indeed received some in the negotiations.