Mr. Tom Whelan:

The overall Vote of the Department is approximately €10 billion and, as Mr. O'Leary said, a large portion of that is down to pay and pensions. Therefore, when we are trying to do the Public Service Performance Report and link it back to the overall spend, we are trying to get the high-level figures in there. There is a lot of other information and other targets within the Department. There is a forward action plan with 46 actions and quarterly updates are provided on that in terms of how we are progressing to meet the overall targets that link in with the strategy and goals of the Department.

In terms of the big spend, in schools it is enrolment and demand driven and the number of teachers is linked to the number of enrolments. This is the case in school transport as well. A lot of it relates to demand-driven areas in the Vote so when we are setting up our targets in the Revised Estimates for public services, REV, that are feeding back into the performance report we always asterisk them to say that a lot of the time it is projections of what it will be as opposed to in some places looking for targets. Sometimes with a lot of the main drivers of the costs we are projecting what the enrolment will be in schools and that is the driver of the costs. That is why we have to work within the parameters of this performance report, and the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Reform and Delivery wants a two-page summary of the key stuff. We try to link it back to what the main drivers of the costs are because it is a cost-based process in that way.