Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I think it is a sad situation. We have been harping on about equality budgeting for a long time and there is a very good campaign group in terms of equality budgeting which has spearheaded a community campaign which has been endorsed by many different progressive groups. It is sad that Europe is forcing us to do this. What Europe is doing in terms of policy is a good thing in terms of getting us to look at the distributional impact of tax increases and expenditure cuts. We will have to do it. Now we are outside the programme, we will have to do it next year and Members will get it in the booklet as a result of that. To me, that is sad because we are sitting in the Irish Parliament. Great initiatives come from Europe and it is good that it is at least making this Government do this but we should be asking what we need for our particular circumstances.

The Minister says this will be very burdensome. We believe in the concept of equality budgeting and think it important, proper and right that society has a view of who is carrying most of the weight and whether it will impact disproportionately on one section, gender or social class over another but the question is how we do that in a cost-efficient way without taking a sledge-hammer to crack a nut. That is not what the Minister is offering. He is saying that Europe is telling us to do it so we will do whatever Europe does and if Europe tells us to do what he wants us to do, we will do that as well and Members will get the information. That is sad. There are other countries in Europe that carry out independent equality budgeting, some more effectively than others. As I explained to the Minister previously, certain departments in Northern Ireland send their budgets for equality proofing independently so it is not as if we are re-inventing the wheel. There is a way of doing this. It is disappointing, particularly in the spirit of the Labour Party which said it and this Government are committed to it.

Perhaps the European programme will be very good and perhaps we will all be delighted at the amount of equality budgeting we will have when we see the details of it. I do not think so. I believe we should figure out what we need to do to best make informed decisions for this State as we bring in finance Bill after finance Bill. The Minister will not be sitting in that chair forever and a day. It might be some other Minister for Finance but we should put down a marker here.

If the Minister introduces policies in a finance Bill, he should have the courage to have them independently assessed to show he takes cognisance of equality proofing in his Department and has nothing to fear from the assessment. His comments are disappointing.

There is no point in criticising the ESRI model for not taking certain factors into account. The Minister does not have the moral high ground to criticise the ESRI's model. It is the only organisation that carries out an impact assessment of budgets because he has refused to allow independent equality assessments. If he had provided for another system of assessment he might be justified in criticising the ESRI for failing to take all measures into account. All we have to go on are its last two reports, which clearly stated that the Minister's budgets hurt the poor disproportionately. If he wants to prove the reports wrong, he should put his money where his mouth is and allow an independent impact assessment of the budget. He has the moral authority to argue for this with his colleague, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. He is a member of the economic management council. I am sure he would be able to get Cabinet approval for such a proposal.