Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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The Supplementary Vote that I seek approval for today is €338.1 million in addition to what was outlined in 2019. We can keep turning the figures and presenting them in different ways but that is what I am seeking approval for. I do not want to muddy those waters. I have outlined that €115 million relates to an overspend from last year which I inherited this year and approximately €90 million relates to decisions taken since. That is either a prerogative that the Oireachtas would like to retain or we can absolve ourselves of. I refer particularly to issues on which the Deputy was extraordinarily animated such as increasing pay for nursing staff - a political decision that was taken outside of the projections in last year's national service plan - and the CervicalCheck ex gratiascheme. That €90 million resulted from political decisions taken by the Oireachtas and the Minister during that period. As long as that facility is available, there will always be potential for an overrun. We can have a debate over whether the Oireachtas should not have any say in the running of the health service and it should be as it is projected in 2019 or 2020 at the beginning of the year and we can accept that, but we cannot have it both ways.

The Deputy asked about the general overrun. I cannot answer historically for the HSE about what happened in 2005 or 2006. I was a county councillor at that time and had no involvement whatever in national politics. I was a member of the regional health forum and that was as much input as I had into the health service then. In general, as the Deputy knows well, it is a demand-led scheme. Much of the money is spent on pay, on which there are many pressures and demands. Politicians, from all sides, continuously demand pay increases and demand that we pay the people who work in the health service better. It returns to my point that we can stick rigidly to the budgets. I was here this time last year when there was an overspend of €655 million. We do not agree that is acceptable, we do not want that level of an overspend in the HSE, it is not our ambition and we are not satisfied with it. To be fair to Paul Reid and his team in the HSE, and the team in the Department, I am here with an overrun of €338 million rather than €655 million. That is not where we want to be but it is progress.