Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

It could not. It is a process, with submissions coming in and an analysis undertaken of those submissions. There is scope for external inputs. For example, I have sought views from the public and we are receiving many useful proposals from front line workers, people who know how savings and improvements can be made in their own workplace. All of this is feeding into the comprehensive review of expenditure. It is not a document being devised by some mastermind; it is a process. Constitutionally, all of this must be weighed up and decided upon by the elected Government. I want the process to be as open as possible. Ideas will be put out there, no doubt, in the course of that and I look forward to interaction with the Oireachtas committees in this regard. However, the Government itself must be in a position to make rational decisions on the basis of all of the options available to it.

See this speech in context