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

I move amendment No. 5:

In page 11, between lines 12 and 13, to insert the following:"3. The Minister shall, within 3 months of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before Dáil Éireann an analysis of the tax changes in this Act, and the total of tax changes and spending adjustments of Budget 2015, setting out the continuing impact on people based on their gender, income, age, marital and disability status.".

There is a theme here with regard to equality budgeting, better access to information and empowering the Opposition to do our job better by being able to table financial amendments which would incur a charge on the State and Revenue. This goes to the core of equality budgeting, which is an issue we have raised time and again. We have heard the answer, that the Minister's colleague is responsible for some of it, but this should be done. If there is a genuine spirit of political reform then equality budgeting should be introduced. Analysis should be done prior to the budget being introduced. However, given the fact that the Minister has told us it is only on midnight on the Friday before the budget that he finds out has €1 billion and he must come up with ways to spend it within 48, 52 or 62 hours, I am not sure whether he would have the scope to do equality budgeting within this timeframe. There is a need for independent analysis of how the budget impacts on various cohorts of people and how the changes in taxes and spending adjustments in the budget impact on people with regard to gender, income, age, marital status and disability status. This basket of indicators can be expanded.
We introduced legislation calling for equality budgeting, which was debated in the Dáil last year but the Government voted against it. It did so because it has consistently failed to undertake independent impact assessments of its budgets in terms of the distributional impact on people's income or the impact on groups of people in society who are already disadvantaged. Earlier, the Minister stated we should deal with the facts. Let us do so. Let us have an assessment of how the budget impacts on various people and not just rely on partial reports from the ESRI, which we all use at different times to inform the debate. Let us have proper analysis and impact assessments on various sections of society with regard to how the finance Bill and the budget in its entirety impact on various groups of people in society.