Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their petition. We asked the Minister for Finance if he would consider the Equality Budgeting Campaign's proposal and the suggestion that the details of the budgetary measures be provided to the ESRI and the Equality Authority for assessment prior to budget day. His response was "[....] to allow for the most up to date economic and fiscal information to be taken into consideration, many of the measures introduced are not finalised until close to Budget day". He is saying that it is not possible to do equality budgeting because much of the detail is only agreed very close to the budget. I would like to get the witnesses' comments on that.
The Minister also stated in his reply:

I believe that the Oireachtas is the most appropriate place for Budgetary measures to be announced. You will be aware that the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure & Reform took issue with the Fiscal Council, in order to carry out its endorsement function, being given the macro economic forecasts prior to the Oireachtas. With this in mind, I believe that there is sufficient time between Budget day and finalising the Finance Bill to allow analysis and debate of the measures to take place. This is also true of the Revised Estimates Volume.

The second reason being stated is that it can be analysed after budget day and that in the ensuing debates to which we would be party, we could argue the case for any of the equality-budgeting measures that need to be taken on board. I ask the witnesses for their comments on that. To put it into real terms, if equality budgeting had been done on last year's budget, what difference would it have made this year?