Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for allowing me access to his officials recently to help me put together budget submissions. It was very useful and much appreciated. The budgetary process reform is also very welcome and I encourage the Minister and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, to consider a much more radical improvement. I am sure the Minister is aware that the OECD scores us as the second worst country in the developed world with regard to budgetary processes. Only South Africa is worse than we are. In other countries we would not be looking at this type of information which, while helpful, is very light. Perhaps it was not the Minister's intention, but the tone of his response to Deputy Stanley was that he will not tell us whether a particular figure is €1 billion because we will find out on budget day. In other countries-----