Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

No. This is another stage in a totally failed budgeting system. Not only does this year's budget fail to address the reform issues, adopting instead the easy option of taxing ordinary families and businesses, but the whole budgetary procedure of which the Revised Estimates comprise a part is one that is not fit for running a corner shop. It is an absolutely arcane and archaic system of budgeting. We are to see a Book of Estimates published without a single target therein. We will see a Book of Estimates with no pressure to deliver efficiency.

If we had put in place the United Kingdom's system of efficiency agreements each year, we would by now, over six years, have €4 billion to spare out of the Estimates to address economic problems. Under our system, there are no consequences in the event of failure. Last year, Ministers reported in their annual output statements that over 40% of the targets they set out to achieve in the previous year had not been achieved. Not even one Minister blushed, let alone tendered his resignation for those failures.

We really need so sharpen up. We cannot continue to spend money without accountability for consequences or transparency as to what is happening. If we do not wise up and reform the system, people will rightly say this House is failing them. This sickens me after all the years during which this side of the House has been demanding reform. We have called for reform through the Committee of Public Accounts and members of all parties, including Fianna Fáil backbenchers and not just members of the Opposition, issued an agreed policy statement, yet we have done nothing about it. The Government stands indicted on that front. The motion on the Revised Estimates does not deserve to be passed on the nod, as has been suggested.

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