Dr. Seán Healy:

We were trying to be extremely careful not to overstate the case. There are things we cannot understand. Any Deputy who looks at the budget closely, as everyone here does, knows that we do not have the detail until we get the Revised Estimates. Therefore, there is a problem with the actual breakdown. Looking at it closely, it seemed to us that there were some spaces where there seemed to be a little leeway. We were trying to work out the exact amounts. From where we were sitting, we thought there was at least a €100 million shortfall. It could be higher. We wanted, however, to be absolutely sure that whatever we claimed was not going to be knocked over because we had missed something. We were trying to be careful.

There is another €100 million on the pay side that we do not think is accounted for in the budget. If that is the case, there is a couple of hundred million that has to be found somewhere, which means that there will be cuts in one form or another either in the existing level of service or on the other side, that is, in the new initiatives. Of course, some efficiencies, as they are called, might also be suddenly found, but nobody was indicating what they might be.