1009. Deputy Leo Varadkar asked the Minister for Social Protection given her Department's large over-estimation of the cost of new measures in recent years (details supplied), whether she has initiated any review or actions to better understand the reasons for these over-estimates, whether she believes they might be cultural to the Department and if she can give any reassurance that the cost of the social welfare package for 2025 will not also be over-estimated or over-stated. [35582/24]

It is widely recognised that forecasting the cost of new Budget measures is an exercise fraught with uncertainty.

In the case of measures referenced by the Deputy, all involve:

• the costings of measures where a new benefit/service was being offered to a new, and sometimes unknown, cohort of the population.

• a costing for which the Department’s data was limited to current recipients or those with whom it offered existing benefits or services.

• costings on which the data required to estimate or model the eligible population was unavailable.

• costings where, even when the eligible population is identifiable, the behavioural response to the roll-out of the measure is impossible to anticipate, particularly in the first year.

All of the measures concerned were discussed and agreed between the then Ministers for Social Protection, the then Ministers for Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform and ultimately agreed by Government as part of the Budget.

Inevitably, given the uncertainty engendered by these factors, it will always be possible to select some  new measures over the past decade where the expected costs are higher or lower than what transpired.

As of the end August 2024, the Department’s financial position in 2024 year to date is within 0.009% of its estimated expenditure for 2024, to the tune of some €17 billion, a budget which included estimation of expenditure for existing level of service, 8 lump sums and 13 new budget measures as part of Budget 2024.

In February, the Parliamentary Budget Office published its second annual report assessing Budget measure costing methodologies across Departments. This report assesses budget costings across all Departments and factors in their analysis of the various dimensions of uncertainty associated with such projections, including data uncertainty, behavioural uncertainty and modelling uncertainty.

Across 13 measures, each rated across 3 dimensions, giving 39 points of analysis, my Department’s estimates were independently rated as 21 elements of low uncertainty, 17 elements of medium uncertainty, and only 1 element of high uncertainty.

As Minister, I certainly do not want to see good Budget proposals curtailed or diluted due to over-estimation of the cost. While there are certain examples where the Department has over-estimated costs, there are other examples where it has under-estimated.  I can assure the Deputy that my Department makes every effort to accurately identify the costs of new measures, notwithstanding the complexity inherent in the exercise.

It would appear that the Parliamentary Budget Office is of the view that it does so to a very satisfactory level.