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

In answer to Deputy Barrett, our job is to put in place the processes and in this respect the Government submission to the select committee on arrangements for budgetary scrutiny helps us to outline the milestones and the timelines. As the secretariat said last week, the best thing we could do is to slightly test the timeline and the process and the best way of doing so is to apply what we do to the 2017 budget. That would allow us to recommend structures and processes.

I have a couple of concerns. I understand that at the conclusion of our meeting last week, we were to try to get the Secretaries General from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Finance to come before us today. The explanation that there was a Cabinet meeting or that we had a bank holiday weekend is not good enough as Secretaries General do not sit on tenterhooks at the side of, or next door to, a Cabinet meeting. At the update of the stability programme Deputy Stephen S. Donnelly fulminated against the late arrival of the report to the Parliament and I was also very angry at that.

Subsequently, I heard a friend in the Department of Finance say that they only heard it at the last minute as well and that it was the politicians who forced them to do it at the last minute. We have to be careful.

I am surprised we do not have the Secretaries General of the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform here today because given our timeline, that would have been appropriate. To a certain extent, it is important we meet them before we meet the Ministers. Having half an hour with the Ministers, Deputies Noonan and Donohoe, would be welcome but, to be honest, for our work, it would be better to have Secretaries General or their relevant staff here to tease out some of the details of this.

When it comes to what they set out in terms of their submission, I have a slight concern, and this is an example of how we can tease it out. What they are effectively saying in the consideration of the spring-summer economic statement and the stability programme update is that it would be presented to the Dáil and then we would review it afterwards. It is a continuation of after-the-fact assessment rather than considering the options and what one thinks before it is written. As a rule, we should try to do this before rather than after it is presented in the Dáil.

When it comes to the mid-year expenditure report, they suggest in their note that as part of that expenditure report, which would be available at the end of June, they would set out aggregate level ceilings for 2017-2019 at the Vote level. I have a concern that aggregate levels do not really tell one much. The submission goes on to state: "Following the publication of the report, it would be open to the Oireachtas sectoral committees to review the priorities and challenges for each Vote Group." Maybe that allows for us to do this. The real purpose here, and the reason I was pushing it last week, is that in June and July, before we break for the summer, the sectoral committees need to get into the finer detail of that expenditure, line-by-line and proposal-by-proposal, and not into aggregate Vote assessments. Then the Oireachtas sectoral committee would be properly prepared to assist the Minister in looking at the options. This is good in that it brings us to a next stage but it is bad in the sense that the Secretaries General are not here to answer any questions we might have about it. Given the timeline we face, that is a real disappointment.