Mr. Seamus Coffey:

Deputy Burton has made important points concerning transparency and budgetary management. We have highlighted those in several reports. Yesterday's Exchequer returns highlighted some of the problems we see with the figures for the Department of Health. For the first 11 months of the year, the spending of the Department of Health is below profile. We are into early December, and in the Exchequer cash-based figures there is no indication of a problem. The Department has been below its allocated amount every month for 11 months so far this year. As Deputy Burton has rightly pointed out, however, a Supplementary Estimate has been flagged of more than €330 million. There is clearly an issue somewhere.

We are not sure of the reason for this, but it is something that we flagged in this report. It would be worth looking at the analysis we have done of the monthly profiles, and the fact that even if the profiles seem to be on target significant Supplementary Estimates still seem to be required. Changes do seem to be needed in how the budget is set, assessed and profiled. We hope this situation will lead to increased budgetary management. I state that because, as the Deputy said, one area seems to be getting additional resources in this unassessed and unplanned fashion, when those resources could be having an impact on other areas. That could be on the public finances, which is where our concern lies, or on other areas of spending. I think Deputy Burton is right to highlight this issue. We feel it is a problem and we have done further analysis in this report that is worth looking at.