Dr. Claire Keane:

We generally produce some quick analysis the day after the budget - usually published in The Irish Times- on the distributional impacts. That is generally done by income groups and on whether poorer or richer groups lost out. We do a larger piece for the quarterly economic commentary in December. Now that we have this incorporated into the model and if we decide there are some interesting findings, we could include some gender impact tables.

That piece will usually contain distribution analysis by income group, income decile or family type. It would show whether it was couples with one earner, couples with two earners, single people or retired people who lost or gained the most. It could be in addition to that.

In fairness, this has only been given to Departments today so I cannot be too hard on them. Officials are probably sitting somewhere giving out about me and saying "Give us a break" or "Give us a chance". However it is available now and, now that it is there, a new version of the model will be given to users every year for budget analysis. Ideally, we see this being used in the future and in next year's budget before changes actually happen. As it is now, it could also be used on the gender side.