Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Please God - and rightly so. It is important to have these arrangements in place because the troika would not have confidence leaving us without some of these additional measures being in place. It should have been in place but be that as it may, it is coming through now.

The main change the Bill will effect is to provide for medium-term expenditure management in Ireland and it makes provision for multiannual Government expenditure ceilings and most importantly ministerial expenditure ceilings. I will come back to that point specifically.

In looking at the policy context of the Bill, we are dealing with the finances of the State. To an extent this is a technical Bill. There is no great issue involved other than managing our finances better. It is important that people understand what is included in the scope of the Bill. I want to deal with what should have been included but has not been. All State revenues must be paid into the Central Fund, the Exchequer. The Government draws on this for expenditure in respect of State services. Government expenditure consists of voted expenditure and non-voted expenditure. I do not know the public at large knows that. I do not believe everybody in this House even knows it. If I asked people the difference between the two, they probably would not be sure. If I asked them about the Central Fund they would not be sure. That is why we are here today. This is part of our job and people rely on us to know what we are talking about and they have trust in us to do that.

The larger part of Government expenditure consists of voted expenditure which is for the ordinary services, including health, social protection, education public services, the Garda, the Army, etc. However, excluded from this legislation is the non-voted expenditure, which is paid out of the Central Fund under specific legislation, without annual reference to the Dáil each year. This consists of expenditure on items such as: servicing the national debt and repayment of loans; running the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, which involves paying our salaries and the operation of this House; share subscriptions to State bodies as required as has happened with banks in the past; and the salaries and pensions of judges, upon which we went to the people with a referendum and yet it is excluded from this legislation.

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