Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the delegates. I have followed the campaign for equality budgeting closely and listened carefully to previous presentations that were made to Oireachtas Members. A delegation from the committee will travel to Scotland in the coming weeks to get the view of the authorities there on how equality budgeting has worked for them. Although the situation in that jurisdiction is somewhat different in that its Parliament does not have the full powers enjoyed by the Oireachtas in terms of budgetary control, it is a country of similar size to Ireland and its experience will be instructive to us. Has an evaluation been done of the effectiveness of the Australian model or any other model of equality budgeting? Australia was one of the first countries to take action in this area, with Scotland being a more recent convert. The delegates indicated that 60 countries are considering implementing some type of measure to take heed of how budgetary measures affect the public from the perspective of equality. Can they expand on that?

There is some confusion regarding the data on inequality in Ireland. In a reply to a parliamentary question recently, the Minister indicated that Ireland now scores better on equality than it did in the past. Other sources have claimed differently. In the delegates' view, have recent budgets had a worse or better impact in terms of equality than previous budgets? Has that analysis been undertaken? The recent period of austerity followed fast on a period of perceived abundance. It would be interesting to know whether the budgets delivered during those two distinct periods differed greatly in terms of their impact on inequality.