Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will answer first the Deputy's questions about demographics and then deal with his questions about equality budgeting.

We will absolutely support the committee in any work it plans to do in this area. For 2020 we have provided a sum of €451 million; for 2021, €455 million; and for 2022, €455 million. In my statement to the committee I outlined some of the medium-term consequences of demographic changes. I have made the point that in coming years we will see a really big change in the ratio between the numbers of people at work and not at work. That will have an impact on the amounts we will raise in tax and the amounts spent.

We have defined demographics in terms of the age profile of citizens. Particularly as a result of my engagement with the Department of Health, I have become increasingly aware that because, thankfully, people are living for longer, related expenditure is growing. We will need to be able to respond to conditions such as dementia and others that are likely to be prolonged the longer people live. We will need to reconsider this issue in the medium term to ensure we will have the correct level of provisioning for it.

On equality budgeting, I have been informed that we did not publish the statement on budget day because we had received quite a significant report on it from the OECD. It contained ten recommendations that it asked us to take into account in the development of our equality budgets. We are studying the report. I will come back to the Deputy with a date by which we expect to be able to publish a response to the report.