Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The concept of collective Cabinet responsibility, which I fully understand, is not at issue here, nor is the status of the decisions taken at Cabinet. The issue is the process by which decisions are arrived at. As the Minister is aware, some of his Cabinet colleagues have been publicly critical of this process. I cited statements made by the Ministers for Social Protection and Agriculture, Food and the Marine, from the Labour Party and Fine Gael Party, respectively, in which they indicated they were on the margins at certain stages when key budgetary decisions were being made. It does not make sense that line Ministers are required to observe the discipline of budgetary ceilings when it is not made explicitly clear that they are centrally involved in the process of arriving at decisions, drawing up frameworks or setting limits. I do not view this amendment as a tautology but as an important clarification which gives firmer definition to the fact that the Government collectively means all Cabinet Ministers. I would have specifically referred to the big spending Departments in the amendment but for the need to ensure that Ministers in smaller spending Departments are also part and parcel of the process at arriving at collective and binding Cabinet decisions.