Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Estimates presented before the House today make a complete and utter mockery of the budget process. Today, in less than 45 minutes, the House is deciding to allocate an additional €634 million of expenditure which was not accounted for in the Government's budget. That is the equivalent of the unallocated amount in any of the budgets we have dealt with in the last several years. When we do that there is a lead-up process, with three days of discussion before budget day. This really clarifies that this Government is completely out of its depth when managing the public finances. Deputy Cowen asked if the Government had learned anything from the mistakes and disasters of the previous Fianna Fáil Government. It appears that it has not. We still have budgets that run way beyond what is projected. This underlines the fact that the Government is not budgeting adequately in some areas. It is not just me who has said this. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has repeatedly criticised the Government, saying its projections for expenditure in certain Departments lack credibility and are unrealistic. Here we are again today, looking at a Supplementary Estimate for the Department of Health which totals €338 million. This is akin to what happened last year. The Department has seen an average overrun of €500 million in each of the last five years. We were told that one of the measures introduced in the bright new dawn of the confidence and supply agreement between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would be credible budgeting for health. However, Fianna Fáil has supported every single budget here and has kept the Minister for Health in office. Unfortunately he only exists as Minister for Health because of the support of the Fianna Fáil Deputies.

The Government is treating the public finances in an inappropriate manner. It expects to come before this House and ask us to approve, in less than an hour, expenditure of almost €750 million which was not budgeted for. Where does that money come from? It comes from unsustainable medium-term and short-term resources represented by corporation tax booms. The Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, has highlighted the folly of depending on this type of tax to pay for recurring current expenditure, which Sinn Féin has warned of for many years. Our view is that the current boom in corporation tax windfalls must be invested in the long-term security of our State by meeting our needs in housing, telecommunications, roads and physical infrastructure. The Government is using these resources, which are unsustainable in the long term, to fill holes in the health budget. Users of the service do not see any benefit or enhancement as a result of the additional resources the Government puts in.

The reality behind these figures is the dysfunction in how the Government deals with funding the HSE and the health service. As a result of not funding this service properly, we now have a situation where people who can be cared for at home at a fraction of the cost are in acute hospitals. Well-paid and well-educated consultants cannot carry out operations and procedures because there are no recovery beds for their patients. Professionals are not able to carry out their work because of a lack of hospital capacity. Consultants are being paid astronomical figures as locum staff because hospitals are not allowed to employ full-time HSE consultants. The same applies for nurses. The result of this lack of prudent financing and proper budgeting and the failure to allocate proper resources to the Department is huge underinvestment.

It is clear that the Government has learned nothing from the past and the mistakes of Fianna Fáil. The only difference is that Fine Gael is not taking dodgy donations from a Galway tent. When it comes to relying on unsustainable tax revenues to fund repeating expenditure, the Government has learned nothing.

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