Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Essentially, there are people in this room who voted for Vote 38 and there are people who did not. It is very difficult for those who voted for the budget and see a €6 billion increase in the health funding to listen to other people in the room talking about cutbacks. Yet, the narrative of cutbacks is out there. There are people out there talking about health cuts. People believe that the current Government, the HSE, the Department of Health, have cut spending on health when in fact there has been more than €6 billion of an increase over the course of the Government's term. I have not worked that out but is that a 35% increase over the lifetime of a very short Government? No doubt Covid was an element of that and we are weaning our way down off what was probably a surge of spending for that but it is still a very significant increase. I have to ask the witnesses the question. They are responsible for spending the money. How did we get to a point where people are talking about cutbacks? What happened?