John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and his officials for their service. This is the Committee on Budgetary Oversight and we are entitled to slightly more detailed responses to some of the questions put by some of the previous speakers. Let us look at a summary of the criticism of the Minister's budget. Some of the critiques have been mentioned. It was premised on the idea of an orderly Brexit. It is pro-cyclical, with no evidence of counter-cyclical measures. Moreover, the Minister has been promising budget surpluses since 2016 and he is back here today promising them again.

The improvements in the general budgetary situation in Ireland have stalled since 2015, and that stall has happened in spite of strong national and international recoveries and a supportive monetary environment internationally with low interest rates. The Minister continues to be over-reliant on corporation tax despite continuous warnings. In the period between June 2018 and September 2018, just four months, the Minister increased projected spending by €1.1 billion. His budget is not consistent with prudent budget management and he has introduced difficult to reverse increases in spending. His budget involves failures which represent a repeat of the policy mistakes of the past and the public finances have been left in a more exposed position to adverse shocks. His budgetary plans for the future lack credibility and he fudged any climate change measures in the budget in a week it was announced that Ireland was second worst in the European Union with regard to climate change and in respect of any other measures aside from the carbon tax. The Minister's three-year budget ceilings are not working, with repeated procyclical, upward revisions to the ceilings. Health spending and the lack of inclusion of the Christmas bonus alone, not to mind overruns in other Departments, pose upward risks to expenditure in 2019. The Minister is dependent on windfall receipts, which are being used for day-to-day spending, while revenue growth has been supported by short-term cyclical developments.

Learning from the mistakes of the past is a common theme in his speeches. Those who were there in the past can argue that the only person who said there was a problem coming down the line was a little known economist in UCD. All the other agencies, including the Central Bank and the ESRI, spoke about soft landings. However, the Minister has been getting warnings and they are escalating, particularly from the IFAC. He did not refer to the PBO's report on the budget or the submission made by this committee. For all the Minister's talk about prudence and having learned the lessons from the past, these comments are made not by journalists but by statutory agencies, as Deputy Broughan said. The Minister has not given us a comprehensive response to a quite damning indictment of the measures. In summary, he does not appear to be heeding the advice he is being given. In further summary, he appears to be repeating the exact mistakes that were made.