Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We will find out on budget day when it will be announced, but in the process used by other countries three months prior to the budget the committee would be given the proposed budget so the Dáil could make an input to it. I will leave this with the Minister and suggest if we want to move towards international best practice this is a great first step but we are still 1 million miles away from best practice and we need to break the mindset of the Executive informing the Dáil on budget day what decisions it has made. It is certainly not how the Constitution is written and it is not best practice. Will the Minister examine this?

The information with which the Minister has provided us is very useful. Would it be possible in future to receive multi-year figures? We have figures for 2012 and 2013 but five years' worth of data can be very useful for trends. With regard to the process, there has been a regrettable lack of willingness on the Minister's part to cost proposals. As a specific example I asked whether the Minister's officials would examine making child care tax-deductible. I will paraphrase, but the answer was no because it would be difficult to calculate. I have a Trinity College undergraduate working it out for us. It was a regrettable response from the Minister in terms of openness to non-Government Members providing useful suggestions for the budget.

With regard to mortgages, I welcome the comments made by the Minister on acknowledging the lack of progress. I wonder whether the Government understands how little is being done. I know this might sound like a silly comment because the Minister is dealing with the banks every day, but the only people pointing out that things are moving is the Government. The Central Bank is not doing it, and if one speaks to bankers privately they will say nothing is moving. Today the IMF stated things were moving far too slowly. Permanent TSB recently stated before the committee that its official policy is never to engage in debt surrender. Bank of Ireland stated before the committee that of the several billion euro made available to it for distressed mortgages it has passed on none while AIB stated that of the several billion euro made available to it, €600,000 has been passed on. I hear the banks will throw every legal and accounting resource they can at ensuring the money we made available to them is not surrendered to mortgage holders. The Minister stated this needs to happen. I do not believe the domestic economy will get going until a very large proportion of this unsustainable debt has been cleared. This will not involve restructuring or interest only arrangements, but debt surrender. We will see what will be the effects of the personal insolvency legislation, and it can go in many different ways because the courts will have huge discretion.

The Revenue Commissioners suggest they will not be able to reclaim €265 million due to a lack of resources next year. Will the Minister comment on this? Does the Minister agree with Christine Lagarde's recent comment that the austerity-only approach we are using in Ireland is not working? This was backed up recently by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist, in a speech he gave in Dublin.