David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That makes no sense in how the Department is presenting this today. The fact that I even have to do this frustrates me. The Department is presenting figures to us of €118 million for PPE, €402 million for testing and tracing, €465.8 million for vaccinations, €6.9 million for the access to care fund, €396 million for Covid acute hospital responses, and €274 million for Covid community responses. That is gross expenditure on HSE Covid responses of €1.665 billion. We know €697 million of that is the figure that was allocated. The additional money the Department seeks is €968 million and there is €213 million of Covid recognition payments and therapeutics. The overall figure is €1.878 billion.

We are being asked to sign off on €1.878 billion of Covid expenditure. What is allocated for the access to care fund is €6.9 million, whereas what was actually provided in the budget is €200 million. The Department then says it is actually spending €130 million. The access to care fund was coming out of the Covid expenditure. I looked back over the budget.