Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have been a champion of equality budgeting for quite a while. A trip to the Scottish Parliament did not dampen my enthusiasm for it, but some practicalities were brought home to me. They are the same as the ones in Stormont. There is a slight difference between those jurisdictions and ours - our budgets deal with tax rates, social welfare rates and so on, whereas theirs do not. They address tax changes subsequently, but they cannot influence them in the same way that Deputies can influence a Minister for Finance or Social Protection after the fact.

The Scottish Parliament has put together an elaborate mechanism for engaging with various Ministers and Departments and is enthusiastic about it. Given the forthcoming referendum, however, it is considering major changes in the event of independence, as it will have the added burden of dealing with tax rates, etc. It is confident that the groundwork it has laid will stand to it. We, on the other hand, only approach issues after the fact. Before it moves to full budgeting and so forth in the near future, the Scottish Parliament has already managed to ingrain the concepts of equality budgeting and consideration of the impacts on various sectors of society in advance of decisions being taken.

Interestingly, committees in the Northern Ireland Assembly have been dealing with the welfare reform process for two years. It has taken that long because the impacts of major changes in social welfare rates and how the social welfare system operated under Westminster - it wanted assemblies to rubber-stamp changes - were not examined. In fairness to MLAs from all parties, they called a halt to that because the impact, how many people would be affected and whether other methods could achieve the same desired outcome needed to be considered. The Scottish did a little work in this regard, but they had already changed some of their rates.

The delay in welfare reform in the North has proven to be the right approach, given the fact that a number of court cases have been taken in Britain on the basis that the impacts of the changes are disproportionate. This debate is worth considering - if the courts come out in favour of those who have been disproportionately affected, it would be a useful tool in Ireland. If the decision goes the other way, we will still need to champion the approach that has been conveyed at this meeting, namely, a longer lead-in time ahead of a budget. Previously, Estimates would be published early, there would be a debate and taxation measures would eventually be decided. In recent years, however, we have been landed with everything on one day. That does not allow society as a whole enough time.

A major failure of this and the previous Governments is the fact that the legislation that flowed from budgets, particularly the Finance and Social Welfare Bills, followed quickly and usually had the guillotine applied to them. That hampered the debate when we wanted to tease out the full effects. If nothing else, we should avoid the use of guillotines on Bills that have an impact on various groups in society.

I wish the witnesses well. The report has been put together following a trip. We had two reasons for going - social enterprise, and major changes in Scotland as regards procurement and local labour clauses. I have not spoken with Deputy Tuffy to sign off on the report of what we saw and heard, but I hope that will be done in the coming weeks.