Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his colleagues from the Department. The Minister has changed some of the words this year, but he is giving us the same old tune, particularly regarding tax expenditures. Is it still the Minister's intention to cut income tax significantly? A figure of €266 million was thrown around at one stage. Do I detect tension between the Minister and the Taoiseach in that area? Given his ideological positioning of the Minister's party, it seems the Taoiseach would like to see a major tax giveaway and the Minister and his Department are trying to hold the line against this.

To broaden that out, as reflected in the discussion with Deputy Doherty, it seems to be a no-change scenario. For example, the Minister talked about stable and predictable tax revenue, expanding the tax base and so on, but there is no evidence of any thought about that. We have large tax expenditures in the area of research and development and so on. Will the Minister quantify our current tax expenditure? What is the total tax expenditure and what kind of redistribution of that expenditure is possible? Could the Minister ease our budgetary pressure by allocating it somewhere else?

When I was questioning him about crime this morning I intended to ask the Taoiseach about the profile of the Department of Justice and Equality, which has had a supplementary budget every year since 2004. Is that the case? Will there be a supplementary budget for the Department of Justice and Equality as well as for the Department of Health? Is there some way for the Minister's Department to produce budgets that do not keep needing supplements later on?