Mr. David Moloney:

The Minister is very aware of the components of the health budget. Obviously the Government agrees the expenditure ceiling for health every year and the expectation is that the health budget will be delivered within that ceiling. Where that does not happen we need to look at why it has not happened. Whereas clearly there are some inflationary pressures in the non-core area of health they need to be quantified. At the health committee, the Department of Health and the HSE also talked about budget management and a more robust pay and numbers strategy. In our discussions with them certainly the pandemic legacy was mentioned at that committee as well.

The greatly increased allocation in non-core funding of €500 million added to non-core funding overall will allow us to quantify those pressures better and have a better understanding of them.