Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

With regard to the Minister for Health being able to predict an overrun in October, I had indicated to the House that there would be an overrun in the health Estimate by October 2014. The Deputy is asking for me to have been able to predict this in October 2013 when I introduced the budgetary parameters. That would be a little more challenging but from now on it would be a brave Minister who would ever stand up and say with certainty there will never be a Supplementary Estimate required for the Department of Health because of the complexity in delivering a modern health system with incredibly fast changing diagnostics, treatment procedures and drugs, all of which put pressures on the system. However, thankfully, they are improving both life expectancy and the quality of life.

On the general question of how we will operate in budgetary terms within the fiscal parameters, I answered a previous question on that at length.

See this speech in context