Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Indeed. Turning to the Deputy's point on the impact of demographics, the life expectancy of women in Ireland was 83.3 years in 2015 while it was 79.3 years for men. That was a large and welcome change compared with where we were a number of decades ago, but it all has consequences for the pre-commitments we need to make.

As to how this affects the budgetary process, between early September and early October, I have countless meetings with colleagues in government and the many civil servants who work with them. They make the case that our ability to fund day-to-day services needs to be increased.

In my experience, having done this over a number of years, when these figures are challenged or interrogated, there tends to be an increase in the provision that we need to make but it tends to be an awful lot lower than it is at the start of the budgetary process. It is fair to say that as I worked my way through budget 2020, I noted that the decrease was lower than had been the case in other budgets. We produced a forecast and update on what we believed the impact on demographics will be in the future on budget day and as we move through 2020 we must assess that paper and keep it in mind in the context of the preparation of next year's budget.

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