Mr. Robert Watt:

If we have absolutely full information that to deliver something, whether it is child benefit, tax changes or anything else for that matter, of course in my experience we do not prepare Estimates that are fraudulent. There is one case in the State over the past 40 years where a fraudulent Estimate was delivered to the Dáil but I will not bore the committee with the history of that. It happened a long time ago. I do not recall that happening in the recent past. The Deputy responded to the budget on the day and we and the Department of Finance set out clearly the cost of every single change incorporated into the Estimates. On this occasion, we would have preferred to have ensured the impact of the decision relating to the hospital and allocation for other spending profiles could have been incorporated into the Estimates. We did not allow it because of the timeframe. There was a discussion as to whether the REV should have been delayed but the decision was taken to publish it because the Government had made a final decision that had an impact on each element of the REV.