Dr Emma Howard

speaker

282 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 25 Aug

Dr Emma Howard’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 2.

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Today with David McCullagh · Fiscal watchdog critical of Government's budget plans · 25 Aug 2026 podcast

Now they took out, as you say, so those overruns, there can be exceptional circumstances where

you know, like Russia invading Ukraine, where it's completely unanticipated, and the government should respond in those kind of emergency situations.

And in those cases, overruns are are, you know, to be expected.

However, what we see is that, you know, for example, the Department of Health

pretty much have budget overruns every year.

And so where those budget overruns are happening without any exceptional circumstances or shocks, it really just reflects poor planning and not properly funding departments.

And we know this year we've got overruns in the Department of Education.

Um we're going to have overruns in health and we're probably looking at again the forecasts are um maybe about one point two billion overrun this year because of those overruns in those particular departments.

Well, it is difficult to predict, but we do, you know, we know that we are facing significant cost pressures and we're going to be facing those into into the the medium and long term.

So, you know, we know the demographics in Ireland are changing.

We have a growing population, but we also have an aging population.

So we do need to factor in that we are going to have to spend more on healthcare as our population ages and that demanding

increases.

And there's there's quite a few things that aren't factored in even to the the package that the government or the spending levels that the government outlined in the summer economic statement.

Because for example, another

thing that they haven't considered yet is the fact that we're going to need a new public sector pay deal this year.

And, you know, the potential cost of that pay deal is in or around one billion.

That again is not something that has been included in these headline figures that the government have have uh produced either.

Yeah, and it will be interesting to see uh whether or not that that's what materializes this year.

And I would say, you know, it is welcome that they are discussing about the need to moderate uh spending increases.

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