Mr. Laurence Bond:

As Dr. Murphy mentioned, we carry out some proofing at the moment. The Deputy mentioned that through the simulating welfare and income tax changes, SWITCH, model, for example, we assess some of the impacts of tax and social welfare measures in particular. However, that occurs mostly after the budget in a public domain. Some of that is carried out within Departments in the lead-up to the budget. Some of that is done for the tax strategy group. There is a commitment to bring the tax strategy group papers into the budget debate earlier this year, although still quite late.

There is an argument for trying to find what has already been done and bring it into the deliberative process of the Oireachtas now rather than after the budget as part of the very short-term things. The kind of micro-simulation modelling that has been used with SWITCH can be adapted for other purposes. For example, the Equality Authority commissioned a pilot study of how SWITCH could be used to analyse gender impacts. In principle it can be used to analyse impacts on some of the other grounds to a limited extent because obviously it is very much dependent on the data in the model.

That type of thinking about impact assessment only works for certain types of policies, essentially tax and welfare type policies. Of course a huge amount of expenditure on policy is not on those types of things. It is important to think about the types of mechanisms required to assess other types of spending commitments in terms of their impact on poverty, gender and equality. That is harder to build on because to some extent we are not talking about an off-the-shelf model that can be used or applied.

However, there is important experience of how that is done in other jurisdictions. Obviously, Oireachtas Members have frequently visited Scotland to learn from its experience. In its budget formation it focuses on equality proofing. As Departments are preparing their budget framework, their budget bids, they are required to prepare an equality impact assessment that is matched to their budget framework. All that is published together. They publish a draft budget considerably ahead of their final budget so it allows them to do that. To do that, they have systems and tools in place partly at departmental level and partly co-ordinated at a central level.

There are some things in the system already that allow for some kind of assessment of certain policies, but at the moment that is not coming forward early enough in the policy formation process. Most people other than those in the Departments are hearing about it ex post. To bring that up to ex ante in the process would be a first step. There are also specific experiences, for example, in Scotland, whereby in the development of budget policy around other types of expenditure there are mechanisms for equality impact assessment and poverty impact assessment, some of which mirror stuff we may have tried but left behind in earlier years.