Mr. Niall Conroy:

I will add briefly to our earlier remarks about health. We have discussed the vacuum in data on what is driving the increases and overruns during the year. One thing we have highlighted from the mid-year expenditure report indicated that there have been significantly higher levels of recruitment in the first five months of the year compared with what was expected. That is one thing which we might look at but there is a case for more data on what is going on in the health sector during the year.

On the forecast generally, we have seen that there have been issues with forecasts in the Department of Health. Significant increases were given to the Department in the last budget but they do not seem to be realistic for the provision of services. If the overrun is being driven by increases in employment, one would expect that to be budgeted for, as levels of hiring would not be unexpected.