Mr. Tony O'Brien:

On the questions about the budget, the committee might forgive me for saying that it can be a tough audience sometimes. I have been attending the committee for four years. For three of those, the only consistent theme has been the kicking of the HSE and the various people who work for it on budgetary matters. It is reasonable in the first year there has been a virtual break-even situation that I would acknowledge the work that has been done by people throughout the system to achieve that and, in particular, the decisions made by the Oireachtas around the funding of the HSE in 2016 which enabled that to occur. Where it is possible to give people reasonable performance objectives, they have shown their ability to deliver.

We are not planning or foreseeing a financial overrun this year. I will reiterate the two points I made at the launch of the service plan. Given the scale of the service, it is worth noting that there is no provision for contingency. That is a standard in the way we fund public bodies. Should there be a significant unforeseen public health emergency, therefore, we do not retain a separate fund for that. That would be something we would have to report to the Minister on if we encountered that. In the context of the enormous appetite for pay restoration and so on, the service plan does not currently provide for that. Notwithstanding those two points, we do not foresee financial overruns in 2017.