Mr. Laurence Bond:

The commitment in the programme for Government is to put in place policies and procedures for proofing budget-making on an ongoing basis. It will mean a change in the system of how we develop and put out budget policy. However, there is a bit of tension with the fact that we are quite far into this year’s budget cycle, an issue which has already been discussed by the committee. It is important to keep in mind that we need to deal in a short-term way but not lose sight of the fact that the commitments to proofing are about how we change the way we do business in a positive way for the future. Essentially, that is not just a one-off in this context.

The key point Dr. Mary Murphy made is that we are talking about changing the system in how we develop budgets through making certain types of information more clearly available, certain choices more clearly articulated, greater transparency and a greater oversight and engagement role for the Oireachtas in that. It is not simply somebody from the outside dipping into that process.

Rather, we want to examine the way we develop budgets at each stage of the budgetary cycle and see how we can build in the capacity to ensure that the areas we are discussing - equality, gender and poverty proofing - are taken into account as policies are being formed and there is some assessment of them which is brought to the Oireachtas to inform the debate here. We can try to assist people in terms of thinking around this. We are talking about a change in the budgetary system and it must be filtered through at all levels of that system.

In the much shorter term, everybody is on the back foot in terms of how we can address the issue of proofing immediately in the budget. It must be approached with a pragmatic mind. To some extent, there may be a need to identify some key areas where it is almost worth learning by doing, that there is an engagement that tries to establish a practice and insight as to how it might be done in the future. It is important to keep the short-term and long-term perspectives in place. Who can do this? While we can assist with it to a certain degree, we cannot do it all for the committee.