Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

Who does the Minister think he is fooling? He knows as well as I do that the so-called deliberative process is excluded from all of the rest of the House. His officials would throw a complete blanket over anything under discussion. Any of the options from an bord snip nua and any of the tax options will be excluded and we will not get any information.

I wrote to the Minister on 13 March and have had no reply to any of my requests for information. The notion that we are being brought in to engage in an intelligent debate is entirely spurious. We can go to the Department to get proposals costed, as we could in a general election. That is nothing. It does not tell us anything about the state of the economy. It does not give us the Minister's revised forecasts for tax, the economy or spending projections. It does not tell us about the costs of different proposals which have been developed by Mr. McCarthy and his colleagues.

If the Minister wants an intelligent debate, that is the sort of information which should be here on the floor of the House. Let us subject it to scrutiny and try and make the best decisions.

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