Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The questions the Deputy asked on the Supplementary Estimate are entirely reasonable but the question he put down did not ask about it at all. I did not bring the big binder of figures that I will have with me when we discuss it at a committee meeting next week.

It is important to bear in mind that the Supplementary Estimate includes a number of different things. It includes some one-off measures that will not be repeated next year, such as the cost of the symphysiotomy payment scheme, the €50 million waiting lists initiative, the extra payday that occurred this year compared to last year and a number of policy decisions made during the year. These were not overruns. Rather, they were decisions made by the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, and I, in conjunction with Government colleagues, to put more resources into the fair deal, to spend a little bit more on GP care for those aged under six, to bring in the diabetes cycle of care and open additional beds in hospitals.

There are different aspects to the Supplementary Estimate and it does not involve just overruns. There were overruns in the cost of medicines because more medicines were used and prescribed than we thought. The reduction in the number of medical cards as a result of the improving economy was not as great as we thought it would be.

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