David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will return to some of the discussion we had earlier. The dark cloud that hangs over the health service at the moment is the level of funding. There is a dispute as to whether the level of funding is adequate, as Mr. Gloster knows. I will not go back over all of that ground but funding is going to determine what we can do for the rest of this year and into next year. When he was last before this committee, in fairness to Mr. Gloster and to Mr. Watt from the Department, they set out the rationale for this year's deficit, which I will get to in a second. Mr. Gloster said that there were a number of reasons and one of which was health inflation, if he remembers.