Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy knows they have been included in each Vote and I have explained this repeatedly. In the 18 months of the Haddington Road agreement to date, we have made over €800 million in underlying savings. That has enabled me to invest €250 million more in meeting the costs of employing more front-line workers, as I have indicated. There are more gardaí, nurses, special needs assistants and so on. It is a better strategy. As our position appeared to be improving earlier in the year, I discussed how we would not simply retire all the money from the Haddington Road agreement savings but redeploy some of them into front-line services in order to ease pressure. We have invested €250 million in that process, which will continue to next year. I do not want to give a false impression that all the restrictions will be undone but we do not want simply to retire all the money saved into the Exchequer to pay down debt. We want, in a structured way, to meet the real pressures pent up over the past six years about which all of us know. These are real issues for the delivery of front-line services.

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