Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for the reply. Having been a member of a health board, quite a long time ago, I have been conscious of the overruns in the health area for many areas. The difficulty is that it has to be possible, at some stage, to identify precisely what the budget should be and then to be able to identify precisely the areas in which an overrun occurs, not only in the Department of Health but in all Departments. I appreciate that capital projects may unexpectedly impact on budgets. If a Department becomes accustomed to an overrun cushion in any given year, is there not a tendency to use that as a means of extending expenditure, notwithstanding that it already had a budget and was supposed to work within it?

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