Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I have two more questions. One relates to the accounting and reporting dimensions of this. With regard to the Exchequer returns, the fiscal monitor for the end of September shows that the overrun in health is approximately €300 million yet the Supplementary Estimate at the end of the full year is €655 million. How is it that three quarters of the way through the year the reported deficit in health was approximately €300 million, yet it ended up at more than double that figure for the full year, which only had three months left? Somebody said to me that it was because the figures reported every month in the fiscal monitor or Exchequer returns are cash-based whereas in health bills are building up that are not yet paid. Can Mr. Desmond outline exactly how that works? We were hearing about a Supplementary Estimate of hundreds of millions of euro but when I cross-checked that with the Exchequer returns, I did not see the same scale, yet that is where it ended up.