Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It is about ten but that is not remotely enough time to interrogate it, be briefed on it, hear submissions from the advisory council and others on it, come up with recommendations and then leave the Minister and his officials with enough time to deliberate on those recommendations and incorporate them into the SPU. It was suggested that the committee would take the draft SPU at the same time as the council but two reasons were put forward by the Minister for not doing that. The first was that the IFAC might change the SPU and, therefore, the committee would be given information that might change and the second was that things change and that the less time we have it, the more accurate the information contained therein. I do not accept either of those arguments and would like to hear Professor McHale's view as to whether they are reasonable. Would the council have any issue with the committee getting the SPU at the same time as the council, with the obvious caveat that it might make recommendations to change some elements of it?

The second question is on the budgetary office. Professor McHale has laid out three possibilities in terms of costings - one is that the budgetary office does all of the costings; another is that it acts as a clearing house; and the other possibility is in between those two. There is an interesting debate about who should do the costings. From a cost perspective to the Oireachtas, staffing a parliamentary budget office to do independent costings of the Departments would be very significant. There would be very serious duplication implications because they not only have to be able to cost taxation measures but other measures like transport, health care, social protection and broadband. Professor McHale has laid out three possibilities. The path of least resistance is that the Departments would continue to do the costings and the parliamentary budget office would provide quality assurance and some air traffic control. For example, if Deputy Boyd Barrett and I were looking for largely similar costings, the budgetary office might be able to do one for us. What is Professor McHale's view on this? Is there any issue with the Departments doing the costings and having the parliamentary budgetary office acting in a co-ordination and quality assurance role?

My final question goes back to what has been raised a number of times on the amount of information. The Commission's annual growth survey was published in December, followed by the SPU, which was then followed by the spring economic statement. Somewhere in between all of that were the Estimates and Revised Estimates and after that the taxation papers. After that there will probably be some pre-budget document and then there will be the budget. The budget is laid across three separate places - taxation, social protection and expenditure. It goes on and on and there are many different moving parts. Is it possible to bring all of it together? We do not have a comprehensive document with both macro and micro data in it.

On page 4 of his submission, Professor McHale laid out the amount of budgetary space available if we do nothing; what happens if we account for socio-demographics and inflation; and what the Government is proposing to do. It then moves from a macro view to a micro view that gives the ten big ticket items, for example a change to the minimum wage and health care. I have a concern that the committee will drown in well-intentioned information. All the bits are in different places. The Estimates, Revised Estimates, social protection and taxation are all in different places. Is it possible to start consolidating this to a master document that would allow a committee get its collective head around the entire position?