Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have not even mentioned some of the allowances, which also deserve scrutiny. There are big figures involved. Assuming they are part of the base is not necessarily a fair assumption. Figures that high deserve scrutiny, particularly when there is an incredible variation in them. An amount described by Revenue as a tax expenditure can jump by €6 billion or €7 billion in a year. That warrants explanation, at the very least. I will just say that.

I have not studied every single page of the public expenditure report but I have read quite a bit of it. Am I right in saying that when the Revised Estimates, which are a sort of consolidated version of the public expenditure report, come out, we tend to get a more detailed breakdown of the different programme expenditures, whereas on budget today, we only hear about programme expenditure, current, capital and total? We get last year's and this year's figures but we do not really get any breakdown. I can see there are certain practical and logistical difficulties and perhaps the issue relates to those. It would certainly help clarify certain debates about how much has been allocated to capital expenditure in housing or how much is going to this or that programme if the same level of detail, or something close to it, was available in the breakdown of programme expenditure on budget day. It would help to avoid some interminable rows about how much has actually been allocated, for example, to capital expenditure on housing. Would it be possible for that level of detail on programme expenditure to be made available on budget day in the budget book?