Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy knows, the legislation on which the institutional payment scheme will be based is working its way through the Dáil at the moment and subsequently will have to go through the Seanad. When my Department engaged with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform during our work on budget 2023, it indicated that the costings it would propose in budget 2023 would be the costings for the establishment of the payment scheme. Work is already under way on this. I refer to the additional recruitment in the Department, for example, or to the training that is necessary to put in place the mechanisms to run what we know will be one of the largest schemes in the State's history. As soon as the legislation is passed and the administrative structures are put in place, the scheme will be ready to operate. At that point, we will return to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform to seek the financial support to allow for the drawing down of those initial applications by way of a Supplementary Estimate. We imagine that some time later this year, after the legislation has been passed, we will need a Supplementary Estimate to support the initial costs of the scheme for the remaining eight or nine months of the year.