Ms Jasmina Behan:

I can explain how we approached the existing levels of service on the social protection Vote. The process involves a number of sessions of engagements with the officials in the Department of Social Protection, with the Vote on our side meeting them regularly throughout the Estimates process. There are more than 70 lines of expenditure on the Vote. Each of these lines is looked at separately, looking at evidence to try to assess what the best assessment of what the Estimate should be on that line. There are a number of drivers for different lines but we have a number of lines that are driven by demographics. These would be the lines on pensions, carers, and disability. Here we use data; both administrative data the Department of Social Protection collects through transactions with the recipients and Central Statistics Office demographics data. We look at several elements on each line. We look at the number of recipients and what our best estimate is and how that will change. We look at the rate of payment because that also depends on the number of contributions people have made and so on. We do an analysis on that. We also have to look at how many payment periods there are because in some calendar years there could be 52 and on some lines depending on when the payment falls, whether it falls-----