Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

If we are to avoid an October moment, or a big bang, we have to engage in June because, as I understand it, the expenditure proposals and the European process involve the State presenting to Brussels our broad initial expenditure outlines and so on. We have to think about how we would get involved. At the very least we could and should ensure that the written element of the Estimates bids and ideas on spending from the various Departments are presented to the sectoral committees at their first meetings when they are set up. We should first review the performance for last year which, as Deputy Howlin said yesterday in the Dáil, has not been done yet. There is no reason Departments cannot present that to sectoral committees in June and that would at least inform us about some of the issues and how this might work. It does not necessarily involve us going through every budget item. If we do not start in June with each sectoral committee at one of their first meetings engaging in the ongoing real budgetary process, we will end up with an October the same as the ones before.

I suggest that a message go from this committee to every Department, and not just the Secretaries General of the Departments of Finance and of Public Expenditure and Reform, that as they prepare for their first meetings with the sectoral committees, one of the first items on the agenda will be their spending proposals and their performance reviews for last year. That will mean all of us in this Parliament start on the right foot and not with a do nothing at all talk shop, which is not real. Let us make it real. We can do that by getting the written proposals. We do not have to hear everyone. That is easy to do.