Ms Jasmina Behan:

I just wanted to respond to the Deputy's comments. I look after the Department of Social Protection Vote. As regards the work that goes into trying to get the best estimate to ensure we deliver services in the following year, we do a number of things that are evidence-supported, looking at data on recipients, demographics, administrative data, average costs paid in terms of the contributions people make and the number of days that have to be paid, which varies by calendar year. Regarding the number of lines of expenditure on social protection that are affected by the developments in the labour market, we do detailed analysis on the expected evolution of the live register numbers. We look at a number of methods to try to estimate how many live register recipients we can expect in the following year and what the cost per thousand recipients on the live register would be. We then use those detailed forecasts to apply to a number of lines that relate to the jobseeker's income supports and the employment supports. When the summer economic statement is published, a lot of that information is not actually visible to us because we have to go through the information the Department has from its administrative data and the analysis we have on the latest data on the labour market and the unemployment rate to analyse all of that and to go line by line. Say for this year, it would have summed up all those lines and we came up with the estimate of €117 million for the social protection Vote. I can also talk about the education Vote, where we also do analysis to understand the demographic movements and the demand for teachers at primary level and secondary level, in DEIS schools and the costs per teacher in terms of those both exiting and entering the service. There is a lot of analysis that goes into understanding and, as much as we can, accurately estimating the expenditure that is needed to deliver services in the following year.