Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 8 October 2015

Public Accounts Committee

2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller General and 2014 Appropriation Accounts
Vote 38: Health
Chapter 13: Irish Blood Transfusion Service Pension Funding

10:00 am

Mr. Jim Breslin:

It would be different. Let me talk in general and I will try to put figures on it, but it will be different in different years. As the Chairman knows, in the current year one will often have an overspend, as has been the pattern in recent years. So one will have an over-expenditure in 2015. That would be one of the first things that one would try to address in the 2016 Estimate. One would also seek to put in place something to provide for demography. I have given the example of €200 million. One would then adjust it for movements in pay rates. So, in relation to next year, there would be an increase in pay rates. In some of the years over this period, that has been a reduction in pay rates and, therefore, one could reduce it down. One will look at the cost of drugs and we have been successful in reducing the price of drugs, but the volume of drugs that are being prescribed continues to rise as it does in most jurisdictions. So we would put in an estimate of that. So they are the constituent elements that we would build up to an overall figure and it would depend on the given year as to what that would be.