Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

The Government is asking us to endorse Supplementary Estimates, but in considering them we cannot let the proposition pass without holding the Government to account for its economic mismanagement. We do not know what further cuts in vital public services are in prospect. In the Christmas period and the dark days of January before the resumption of the Dáil at the end of that month we will learn of further savage cuts in health, social services and education. This is the pattern. Sinn Féin will join with citizens in fighting those cuts and that is our pledge to the Fianna Fáil and Green Party coalition in the closing days of this Dáil session. We support the essential additional moneys for the Department of Social and Family Affairs with an additional 5,000 claimants presenting per week with spiralling unemployment, sadly, the order of the day.

Little attention has been given to Vote 40, the Supplementary Estimate for health of €350 million. Last month the British Department of Health told The Irish Times that negotiations have been underway with the Irish Government for the past 18 months. Privately I understand the British believe there was ample evidence that HSE bills had been "far higher than they should have been". In July the British failed to pay a demand for €125 million of the bill and, in recent months, senior Department of Health and Children officials held talks on the payment issue with the British. The payments are based on the 1971 bilateral agreement, buttressed since by EU regulations. We must ask how this came about. We are not being given all the information. It points to overcharging by the HSE, which has led to the shortfall and this Supplementary Estimate. It is another example of the disastrous mismanagement of the health funding and services by the HSE and the Department of Health and Children.

I strongly object to the lumping together of these myriad Supplementary Estimates, some of which I support while others raise substantive concerns for me and others in this House. The process deserves much more attention and scrutiny than the miserable 30 minutes afforded this morning.

Votes put.

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