Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I thank the Tánaiste for clarifying the Government's objective on public expenditure cuts. She has confirmed both in an interview and on the record of the House that the Government objective is to achieve €4 billion in cuts in public expenditure, obviously something of significance. We now know what will be in the budget in so far as cuts and spending are concerned. What we do not know is when the budget will be brought before the House. Yesterday, when I asked the Tánaiste about this she informed me the Cabinet had not met this week to decide the matter and we subsequently discovered the Cabinet had met this week in fact, but that it had not decided when the budget was going to be introduced. Can the Tánaiste give us any indication of when the Budget Statement will be made?

Will the Tánaiste clarify the Government's position in respect of the children's referendum? In 2007, the Government published a wording on the proposed constitutional change in respect of the rights and protection of children. It was agreed at the time by all parties that the proposed wording was inadequate and a committee of the House has been engaged in trying to come up with a suitable wording since then. All parties and all members of that committee, including the chairperson from the Government side of the House, were of the view that the wording originally proposed was inadequate. I understand that yesterday the Minister with responsibility for children told the committee that the Government now considers the wording is adequate. Can the Tánaiste clarify the Government's position in respect of the proposed referendum on children? Will the Government proceed with the referendum on the basis of the wording that it originally proposed? Has the committee been wasting its time for the past two years?

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