Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

We do not propose to prevent the Government having a debate on this issue at this point. However, it is worth remarking that this proposal arises from a budget overrun which occurred in a particular Department that was going to hurt people at the front line. Measures are now introduced to vire money to prevent frontline services from being hurt, yet in other Departments that have a far more vital impact on people, namely, in health, the same effort is not made to deal with budget overruns to make sure people at the front line are not hurt and that money is vired from administration and other areas that can take the cut to protect people at the front line. It is interesting that there is one solution in one area of Government and a different solution elsewhere.

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