David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the points made by Deputy Eamon Ryan regarding the immediacy of the committee's work in the context of budget 2017. While we need to inject ourselves as quickly as possible, in some respects that is a separate issue at this point. We have five weeks within which to agree a framework, which will require an awful lot of work. I welcome the establishment of this committee, which presents us with powerful and radical opportunities to change how budgets are framed and how collectively the Dáil can have an input into all of those decisions. However, there are issues that need to be teased out. For example, the agenda for today reflects the committee's terms of reference. In regard to subparagraphs (a) to (e), is it intended that the committee will deal with each of them separately? Is it also intended that the committee will discuss who it should invite to appear before it or from whom it needs to obtain written submissions? I agree with Deputy Pearse Doherty that we should first request written submissions which we can parse and then decide which we want to tease out further.

We also need to tease out the limitations of the committee. The briefing documents we received reference a need to operate within current constitutional legal and statutory provisions but if the committee's work is to have real value, the ban on Opposition parties putting forward money Bills needs to be reviewed and its work on equality and poverty proofing of budgets, which work I support, must be put on a statutory basis. For that to be a reality and if the committee is to have any real power, a change in legislation is required.

On economic models, the assumptions in the briefing documents we received are very good but these models need to be challenged and tested, particularly in the context of the fiscal rules. We are seeing some of that played out already in the context of flexibilities around capital investment and so on. This is the work on which we need to be focused. While we can have a general chat today around all of the issues, in my view we need to get down to the work of fleshing out the terms of reference as quickly as possible.