Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to respond to that. I have spent a lot of time looking at numbers and analysis. The no-change budget was released by the Department of Finance last Saturday. One cannot put a balanced budget together without that. Therefore the proposal that people on this side of the House can put a budget together and submit it to the Department of Finance - which can come back to say whether or not it will work - is nonsense. The only way one can put a balanced budget together is the way the Department of Finance does it, which is to look at the no-change budget. It is only when one sees the Estimates for 2013, for what would happen with no budget, that one can say "These are the things we are going to do".

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