Susan O'Keeffe (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming here and for bringing this petition. The ship of state moves awfully slowly and it changes even more slowly. I say that because it is true. Any changes people try to introduce will also be achieved slowly. However, while there have been observations about the way we have a last-minute budget - having spoken to various Ministers, they say there is always a bit of a scramble at the end of the budget process - the heavy lifting goes on for some months beforehand, leading to refining at the last minute. We need to establish where in the timeline this ought to fit in. We should not get distracted by that last-minute process.

There is always some window dressing and shuffling things around at the last minute. The task is to try to work out the earlier timeline and where this would fit in with that. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, who is the Minister for this committee, has said he, like the witnesses, believes there should be greater transparency for parliamentarians and a greater understanding that it should no longer be like the third secret of Fatima. While steps are being made with the publication of the Estimates and the changed timeline for the budget, it is slow. People who need to be taken care of cannot afford to wait, which is where the witnesses come in.

From the experiences of and research by the witnesses, what has been the impact of equality budgeting in other countries on those groups of people they spoke about? While I know there is research, I do not know it off the top of my head and it is not in today's presentation. Ireland is behind the curve. The witnesses said 60 other countries had already introduced some kind of equality budgeting, and in 2005 the World Bank said we were poor at budgeting. What strong evidence is there that having a unit or expertise translated into people having more money to spend? What evidence is there that governments did not just set up an equality budgeting unit to look clever, but that it made a difference? What countries would the witnesses point to as examples to show it works? I do not want to be part of recommending another piece of window dressing on the window dressing, merely appointing experts for the sake of it. I am not being cynical, but we are quite good at that. We put all sorts of reports on shelves and all sorts of people are doing all sorts of things that have no impact.

If we were to follow the advice of the Equality Budgeting Campaign and have such a unit, would it be part of the Economic and Social Research Institute? Where would it be sited and under whose auspices? Where would it sit and who would be on it? I am sure the witnesses have thought about that in order to raise a petition, come here and recommend it to us. The idea of a unit by itself is too airy-fairy. I do not mean to be critical, but I do not want to recommend it unless I know exactly what we are talking about.