Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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A substantial amount of analysis covering some of the groups listed by the Deputy has already been published or is due to be published shortly. This week, the Department of Social Protection will publish the social impact assessment of the welfare and income tax measures in budget 2017, presenting the overall distributional impact of the budget by income group and family type. It will also examine the impact of the budget on the at-risk-of-poverty rate and work incentives as well as the impact of the change in the minimum wage. The social impact assessment is being completed in consultation with my Department in respect of the income tax elements of the budget and is consistent with my Department's analysis of the impact of the budget package.

Deputies will also be aware that the programme for a partnership Government sets out a commitment to develop a process of budget and policy proofing as a means of advancing equality, reducing poverty and strengthening economic and social rights. The programme undertakes that the institutional arrangements for the independent fiscal and budget office will support equality and gender proofing and draw on the expertise of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission.

In this light, I draw members' attention to a number of new innovations and improved features of this year's budget documentation. First, section 5.2 of the budget book, which deals with social impact and equality analysis, sets out the stages in the budget process at which equality and distributional issues are explicitly addressed and outlines recent developments in these areas. This section also describes in detail the process adopted by the tax strategy group, including the pre-budget publication of the tax strategy group papers for the first time this year. It also details some of the annexes featured in the budget book which focus on equality and distributional issues. These include Annex A, which presents information illustrating the effects of the budget measures on different examples of income earners and household types across a range of income levels. Also presented here are tables showing the development over time of the average effective tax rate for different household types across a range of incomes from a variety of sources. Furthermore, Annex B, which deals with progressivity and income tax issues, analyses the role the income tax system plays in the distribution of income, which is an important factor in assessing the fairness of the budgetary process.

Finally, the new social impact assessment framework developed by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in order to facilitate a more comprehensive assessment of budgetary policies on household living standards is described in the 2017 expenditure report and accompanying papers. This new framework will complement the established Department of Social Protection social impact assessment, which focuses on the effect of income tax and welfare measures using the ESRI's SWITCH model. The new framework expands the assessment to consider the effects of expenditure on public services. The first of the new social impact assessment papers examining the general medical services scheme and the targeted child care scheme also accompany the expenditure report published on budget day. All the materials from budget 2017 can be accessed on the budget website at .

Therefore, on the basis that the analysis proposed in the amendment is already available or soon to be published, I do not propose to accept the amendment.