Dr. Thomas Conefrey:

We should not overstate it. It is €600 million over a five-year period and in terms of the size of the overall budget, these are relatively small differences. We have been working with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to identify where we diverge.

As the committee can imagine, over that kind of medium-term horizon some of the assumptions that one uses in these calculations can change and commentators can have different views. We have our own demographic model that we use to produce forecasts of the population by relevant age group over that period and some of the difference could lie there. Also, some of the individual categories - when one thinks about the drivers of demographic pressures, for example, in health and education - involve fairly complex and detailed work, and it is not surprising that one can get differences. Over that period, a difference of that size is actually quite small. It is something we are working on with the Department, and the Department published a helpful paper of its own along with the budget documentation explaining the demographic drivers in health and education. We place more of the emphasis on the other side of the calculation where the real difference is, that is, on the prices side. That is really where the gap over the full five-year period opens up between us. On the demographics, the differences are really quite modest over that length of time.