Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Okay. On the current system, our budgets and how we budget, sometimes a certain amount of money might be set aside for particular programmes that are valuable and for positive things to happen but we are not seeing the system change across the entire budgetary spectrum to really effect the shift we need to see. Is that a concern about our budget that we do not have a cohesiveness across government? We might have a really good programme such as having biodiversity officers in each council which might cost €1 million a year but at the same time, a lot of biodiversity damage is happening. The Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, and other agencies look at our budgets to see whether they are progressive or regressive from a social perspective. Would it be worthwhile to have an assessment of our budgets to see if they are environmentally progressive or regressive on the whole?