Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I point out to Deputy Kenny that 80% of day to day expenditure is in the areas of health, education and social welfare. However, economies have to be made and moneys must be reallocated, while keeping the overall spending limit for this year at what we intended. Because of the deteriorating economic situation, where we have increased allocations to provide in areas over and above what was projected, money must be reallocated from within the overall Government spend.

The critique from Fine Gael was that we were not doing sufficient in this area. The bottom line is that this must be dealt with in a way that will seek to minimise the impact on frontline services. That is what we will seek to do. The whole purpose of these proposals is to minimise the impact. As regards this specific allocation, the money was ringfenced for this purpose. This specific purpose cannot come into operation for practically the whole of this financial year. Therefore that allocation is not required in present circumstances.

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