Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not believe we are. In the engagement I have with Departments and on the Deputy's point on the effect of inflation on ELS, my assessment is that inflation is having a bigger impact on the delivery of capital programmes, the number of companies that want to bid to deliver projects for the State and the cost of those projects. In this area, the carry-through from inflation into the spending of money is a lot bigger. I would say it is still about the accumulated effect of demographics and the need for us to continue to better model demographics in the future is having a bigger impact than inflation on our ELS work at the moment. In any event, one of the major reasons we decided to go beyond 5% again was the anticipation that more ELS funding would be needed for a number of Departments, because inflation will still have an effect.