Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is very useful. That was my understanding, as well. An awful lot of the talk in Brussels on Tuesday was about parliamentary input, parliamentary legitimacy and the disconnect between executives, cabinets or governments and their parliaments. I know this is not an issue for the officials to comment on but the reason I ask it is that it is important that we understand that the European semester does not require the Government to submit the budget. The Government is choosing to submit a final budget and in doing so is continuing the bypassing of the Oireachtas in what it does. Other member states are, in fact, going to submit draft budgets. Their parliaments are going to discuss them as is done in a grown-up democracy and then, after parliament has ratified it, the budget will be sent by the end of December to Brussels but in our case the Government has decided to bypass parliament and submit the actual budget. That is something we need to keep in mind. It is an awful pity. What happens if the budget is very different from the SPU?