Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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To follow up on that, was the key reason the Minister did nothing about carbon taxes not that the Government was hoping to have an early general election, which could have taken place by now? However, it was politically impossible. I notice that the Minister, or rather the Taoiseach, is talking about the tax-and-dividend approach now. This seems to imply that carbon taxation, which would hurt our poorer households, would eventually go back to people. Is the Minister saying that there is a very significant chance we will have to have a revised budget in 2019? Is that the reality, even in the present circumstances as the British Parliament goes into another important vote today? The Minister presented us with a proposal for an omnibus Bill with 17 sections. I asked him a question about that. His questions have been deferred. Has that been costed? Has the Minister costed the impact of going forward with some or all of that legislation?

I will ask the Minister again to return to the question that Deputy Breathnach asked about the fiscal assessment report of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC. Was it not an astonishing critique of the Minister's administration of the Department of Finance? The key points of that large report concerned 2018 spending, taken with the 2019 budget. The report says the plans are "not conducive to prudent economic and budgetary management". That is a very fundamental point. Professor Coffey and his colleagues write that repeated budgetary failures "have left the public finances more exposed to adverse shocks". The Minister has left us in more difficult circumstances because of his conduct of budgetary policy in 2018 and his plans for 2019. As my colleagues have said, the report states "the medium-term budgetary plans are not credible". The Minister has dropped previous medium-term plans and his current plans simply cannot be believed. Is that not a fundamental problem?

When he was here, I asked Professor Coffey about net policy spending, as did one or two other colleagues. It was quite clear that problems with corporation tax were inhibiting net policy spending rising in line with sustainable revenues. The Minister does not have a system of sufficiently sustainable revenues. That is the problem. He is talking about doing a report on it. IFAC did not say it to us, but elsewhere Professor Coffey has said that the Minister's fiscal approach has echoes of 2007. Is this not an incredibly severe critique, from the statutory Government body meant to oversee the work of the Minister and his two Departments on a whole range of areas, of how the Minister has computed spending for 2019 and exceeded in 2018? We gave the Minister some suggestions, like equalising diesel and petrol revenues. The Minister was not prepared to get the additional revenue necessary. One journalist noted that Professor Coffey is a hurler - he is a goalie, actually - and said he gave the Minister and his Departments a fairly severe rap of the hurley. Is that not a fair assessment of the report? It is a very damning assessment, given the era during which the Minister is in charge of the Department.

I wish to ask the Minister about health spending. Is the budget oversight group consisting of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, the Department of Health and the HSE up and running so that we can get adequate forecasting? It was our committee, as the Minister will remember, and colleagues beside me who identified the huge lacuna in health spending for 2018. The Minister had to come forward with a Supplementary Estimate of more than €655 million. Is he beginning to get a grip on that in any way? Ordinary citizens are quite upset and horrified at the huge escalation in the cost of the children's hospital and the fact that every time we look at it, or any time Deputy Donohoe, the Minister for Health or the Taoiseach talks to us, the price of the hospital is higher.

Looking back at the record, the Minister's old constituency colleague, former Deputy Ahern, played a nefarious role in that whole matter by interfering in it and postponing the location and building of the hospital. It could have been built by now.