Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The planned and budgeted amount was €128.5 million. The amount actually spent was €132.050 million. The extra is €3.5 million. It is not 100% allocated but the vast majority of it went to the renegotiating of our GP contracts. That probably does not pop into the Chairman's head as an agency but we classify all of the doctors who do all of the certifications for us as agents. As the Chairman will be aware from the lovely mess that we caused with the illness benefit changeover last year, we renegotiated the payments to our agency staff - our GP contractors. It was increased significantly. It is now €50 per payment. Although we had anticipated we would be giving them an increase, we did not anticipate how good, as negotiators, they would be. They got a better than anticipated, but well-deserved, increase.