Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Along the same lines, in any Estimate in any Department, and it applies no less to this one, there is a provision in the system whereby you have to make a conjecture as near as possible to what the budget should be for the year. Otherwise we are shadow boxing. We do not know where we are going. We do not know what the various requirements are. In private industry, a prime cost, PC, sum is provided but we were told the health issue cannot be estimated with accuracy because it is demand led. Even where a service is demand led, you can calculate fairly accurately what the requirements are and how to deal with it in short and graphic terms. If we cannot do that and the committee cannot get that information, and we are being told we cannot have that information because the Department thinks this is best handled in another way, the public will think we do not know what we are at. They will say "They are short again and they are going to be short next year and they were short last year". We know all that. This is eating away at public confidence in the system to provide the service. That is hugely important in the context of the present conversation.

I have raised this myself on numerous occasions. In the last 20-odd years or more I have raised it, particularly around budget time, to inquire as to whether various Departments, the Department of Health in this case, had adequate resources available to run the anticipated services for the year. That question is still relevant. It would appear that was not the case and adequate provision was not made. Why was adequate provision not made? It is because it was impossible to identify what the target was. That is the only conclusion I can come to. It should not be that way. It cannot and should not be that way because that erodes public confidence in the quality of the service and the people who make provision for the funding of the service. That is not a tilt at anybody in particular. It is just a fact of life. We can go through various situations where the public will say there is an overrun again and that the service cannot do anything right. The Cathaoirleach rightly mentioned this himself, as did Deputy Doherty. It is important to restore public confidence in the ability of the system to make sufficient provision to provide the services it proposes to provide. If it cannot, why not?