The Minister for Finance, Mr Cowen has announced the revised estimates for this year's Budget with the main changes affecting the Department of Health.
A supplementary estimate will be provided to meet the cost of the ex gratia payment scheme established for those wrongly charged for long-term nursing care in health board institutions.
The Department of Health will meet the costs of this process until reimbursed by the supplementary estimate.
The Minister for Health, Ms Harney, had announced earlier in the week that there would be no cutbacks in the estimate for the Department of Health or any other department as a result of the ruling.
However, she acknowledged that "money that will need to be repaid is money that could be used for other matters" and described the task of making the repayments, estimated at around €500million as "complex and mammoth".
There will be extra expenditure of €543 million in respect of various hospital and other charges that were previously collected and retained by the health boards. The Department of Foreign Affairs was allocated €12 million to facilitate a change in the accounting year for its overseas missions from October until September to January until December, while an additional €10 million was allocated to the tsunami relief effort in South-East Asia.
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs remarked that there had been a relatively small adjustment in the revised estimates this year, and a that a lot of the changes were due to accounting issues.
The revised estimates reflect the spending totals announced on Budget Day in December, along with some adjustments arising since then across a range of departments.
Total gross voted expenditure, incorporating capital and current services, this year will amount to €45.7 billion, almost €4.5 billion more than 2004. The year-on-year percentage increase is 11 per cent.
Spending in the Department and Family Affairs is set to rise by 8 per cent, Health and Children by 13 per cent, Education and Science by 9 per cent, Environment by 12 per cent, Transport by 12 per cent, Justice by 8 per cent and others by 13 per cent.
