Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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I will move on, because we have had a full debate on this matter. I did not say the Minister had pulled the property tax out of the sky. I am well aware it was in the Thornhill report, in the troika programme and previously in the four-year plan. What I am saying is that I would love to see the analysis that the Minister claims the Department has done with regard to those people in mortgage distress and how they will pay the bills coming through the door from next week onwards. Equality-proofing is about looking at a group of people. Those in mortgage distress may not be one of the groups.

I heard what the Minister said; l know how the budgetary process works. As he knows, what we want is a document from the State showing the impact it will have on different sections. Disability groups are not resourced to do that type of work. They are working on the front line and do not have resources at their disposal to do this type of work. They do it because they believe it is important in trying to shape public opinion into the future. To cut to the chase, we cited the North of Ireland earlier, which has done this. I agree, and have said before, that comes from the historic model of one party rule in the North. There are other examples. Let us look at the Scottish example, which is not too far away. It has an equality and budgeting advisory group, which increases the transparency and equality proofing of budgets.

What I am asking the Minsiter at this point, although I would be delighted if he accepted this amendment, is to indicate if his Department will look at the Scottish model to see if there is potential to apply such a model in this State with whatever Irish tweaks we need to make? If he agrees in principle with the idea of more transparency and equality proofing, why not look at what is happening in other jurisdictions? I am only offering the Scottish model as an example because it is our next door neighbour but there are other models which can be looked at. That is the trend. We will have a far better budgetary process in the future than we have had in the past, which we all welcome. The sooner that happens, the better. This could be a central part of it. Will the Minister indicate if he would be open, without accepting this amendment, to looking at that potential for the future?