Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his detailed response. I appreciate that he is trying to move in the right direction. I participated in the finance committee's examination of his Department. He will probably agree that it was useless. There was no accountability for the Department's increase of the CER by €88 million. The data we examined were not rigorous. My understanding is that the same frustrations were heard from the other Departments.

In February, the Minister stated that we had an open and more modern budgetary process that allowed the Dáil to be fully involved in expenditure policy. That is not the reality. Deputy McDonald asked a fundamental question about whether the Government will conduct an equality impact assessment of the budget. I have asked whether there will be a regulatory impact assessment, a gender impact assessment or a poverty impact assessment. The Minister did not answer my question.

As the Minister is aware, the OECD rates our budgetary process as the second worst in the developed world. In particular, it points out that the Parliament has no time to interrogate a budget before the latter is presented as a fait accompli by the Government. In two weeks time, the Minister and his colleague, the Minister for Finance, will address the Dáil, but that will be it. We score zero out of ten in that regard. The OECD also scores us zero out of ten in terms of the quality of information provided to allow us to interrogate the budget.

I appreciate that the Minister is trying to modernise an archaic, useless system. Specific to the upcoming budget, will there be a regulatory impact analysis, a gender impact assessment and a poverty impact assessment? If so, will we have them before the budget?

See this speech in context