Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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385. To ask the Minister for Health the unallocated spend within his Department for 2017; the expenditure allocated to programmes in 2017 which are due to cease in 2017; the funds that will become available within the Department's expenditure profile in 2018 due to changes in demand for goods and services and or changes to costs within his Department and so on; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32228/17]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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All 2017 funding approved by the Oireachtas for non-HSE expenditure has been allocated to-date. To end June, overall net Vote Issues are €57.5m under profile. Revenue subheads account for €21m of this variance while Capital subheads account for the remaining €36m. The positive revenue variance relates to the Department’s spending with the HSE revenue vote spend on profile. The capital underspend relates predominantly to the HSE

subheads. In the main, the variances represent timing and profiling issues which are expected to reverse prior to year end.

In the case of the HSE, €36.5m was held back at the beginning of the year pending the commencement of certain developments. Most of this funding will be approved and released in the context of the mid-year adjustment to the HSE approved level of expenditure.

At this stage, the Department does not anticipate that any programme or services allocated funding in 2017 will cease to exist in 2018.

As ongoing demographic and inflationary pressures result in cost increases in the health system year on year, there is no evidence to suggest that changes in demand for or costs of goods and services will yield savings to be reallocated to other areas in 2018.