Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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515. To ask the Minister for Health if he will provide a breakdown by year, from 2016 to 2021, inclusive, of the estimated additional expenditure required to meet the requirements of demographic changes, on a no-policy-change basis; and if he will identify the component parts of that expenditure [18696/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The exact information for the years requested by the Deputy is not readily available. However work done by the Department of Health last year showed that for the health services as a whole, the estimated additional demographic cost pressure in expenditure ranged from €180 million to €201 million per annum, from 2014 to 2015.

It is important to emphasise that this projection in expenditure assumed that the health services would have the same age-specific population-based utilisation rates and unit costs in 2015 as in 2014.

Nonetheless, I am aware of the additional demographic pressures that exist and those pressures that are emerging. Decisions made will take into account those pressures.