Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is something that I would like to do and want to do. It would be a very useful exercise to do equality budgeting to determine the social impacts of the budget. Unfortunately, because so many budget decisions are made so late in the day, it is hard to do that analysis. It is a flaw in the budget process that so many decisions are made so late that we only find out about their impact afterwards.

It is only worth doing if it is going to be for real. That is why we would need full engagement and buy-in from the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform. There is no point in us just doing it, publishing a report but not having any impact on decisions. That said, changes are happening already. The tax strategy group's papers were published for the first time this year and we also have the new budget scrutiny committee which is a real step forward.