Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The HSE published its service plan subsequent to the budget. Its service plan for this year sets out expenditure of more than €12 billion, which it estimates will meet the needs of the health service for this year. It is interesting, and I referred to this previously, that the conclusions of the European Council published last year indicated that even though Ireland has a relatively young population, our public health expenditure was among the highest in the European Union in 2012, at 8.7% of GNI. This was significantly above the EU average of 7.3%. We have maintained that. We are actually spending more. Part of the task before us is to drill down to make sure that expenditure is going where it is required. I have never viewed this as simply an issue of money because it is also a question of what we are getting for the money. This is why we have changed the budgetary process to focus on outcomes as well as inputs. There is a view that the response to everything, and I listened to "Morning Ireland" again today, is more money as opposed to an analysis of how we are spending money.

In regard to the Supplementary Estimates, our greatly improved fiscal position at the end of last year gave us the capacity to deploy more resources. As I have stated in this House, if we have more resources to meet real pressures across all sectors, I am happy to discuss that with colleagues to see whether we can deploy them.

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