Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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I thank our guests for both their time and their statements. Obviously, the overrun this year, at €700 million, is huge. We will see what it reaches by the end of the year. Not only is it a vast amount of money that we must vote through this year, it also has serious implications for next year and the following years. The budget documentation has provisioned €625 million for all future years based on this year's overrun. The health budget is going to increase by nearly €1.7 billion. Over €600 million of that will be for the overrun, and there are demographics and pay agreements. When one strips it all out there is not enough left to get serious about Sláintecare and the modernisation and scaling up of the system. The overrun does not just affect the Exchequer this year but the €625 million that must be allocated to cover the overrun essentially means Sláintecare is not happening next year. Sláintecare requires approximately €1 billion per year, although one could probably pare it down a little. The implications of these overruns are enormous.

There have been overruns for a long time. However, between 2008 and 2011, they were between €70 million and €200 million, which is still significant, but then they jumped to over €300 million.

By 2014, they were at €500 million, then €600 million, €660 million and now €700 million this year. While, obviously, there may be overruns in the health sector for unforeseen events, there has been a massive leap. We are tipping along at a figure of €700 million a year and have been for the past few years, with 2017 being an outlier. What has gone on in the past few years that is different from happened in previous years? We were looking at much more modest overruns, whereas now they are enormous. Notwithstanding the fact that there are always crises and storms in the health sector, with expenditure on drugs that was unanticipated and inevitably a certain amount of unanticipated activity, why are the overruns now approximately three times what than they were a decade ago? What is going on?