Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill as a small step towards significant budgetary reform, although I shall outline the specific concerns I have with it. I have the greatest of respect for the Minister of State at the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Dinny McGinley, but it is ironic that the Minister, Deputy Howlin, stated in his contribution, "We have introduced a number of important budgetary reforms aimed at enhancing the openness and transparency of the budgetary framework", only to leave when Deputy McDonald started her speech. There are only three Opposition Deputies on the Minister's sub-committee, namely, Deputy Sean Fleming, Deputy McDonald and me. The Minister's departure set the tone for our contributions. There is a lot of big talk from the Government but its culture and actions belie its words. Ministers claim they are listening only to leave the Chamber when we speak. By leaving at the start of Deputy McDonald's speech, the Minister perfectly illustrated this problem.

We know that budgetary reform is badly needed. In 2005 we were scored by the World Bank in the lowest quartile internationally. We are in the same category as Greece, Cambodia and Kenya. In an index of legislative capacity produced in 2006, we scored zero out of ten in the quality of information given to parliaments to assess budgets and in the time given to parliaments to assess budgets. In another study of OECD and other countries, we came 35th out of 36 countries. The only country worse than us at doing budgets was South Africa. We are appalling at this process and previous Government and officials are to blame. The culture of secrecy and protecting information is extraordinary.

The programme for Government states: "We will open up the budget process to the full glare of public scrutiny in a way that restores confidence and stability". I have spent several years working with numbers, budgets and financial analyses in the public and private sectors and nothing in this process instills confidence in me or leads me to believe that it will achieve stability. The Minister regularly makes speeches like the one he just made to tell us he is doing everything he can. Opposition Deputies are constantly asking for improvements but we do not seem to get them. Government backbenchers are now calling for reform. I read in this morning's The Irish Times that there was a surprising amount of support in Fine Gael for Deputy Eoghan Murphy's proposals on political reform. We know it is wanted on all sides of the House, that it has been promised and that it would make a big difference but it does not seem to happen.

This Bill will not introduce these much-needed reforms for two buckets of reasons. These are the mechanics of the process, which are bad although getting better, and, more important, the culture in which it happens. Without a change in the culture, nothing else will change. The Minister stated that the Government has "completely modernised and reformed the annual Estimates process, built performance-related information into the heart of the budgetary documentation, and brought evidence-based policy-making to the forefront of public service delivery". That is nonsense. This Government has not modernised and reformed the Estimates process. I am heavily involved in that process and it remains a shambles.

In regard to performance information, I have studied closely the documentation on the revised Estimates provided by the Minister. It contains a few performance-related metrics but nothing which would allow us to hold anyone to account. The font is probably 4-point or 6-point. One would not want to be hard of sight because it is a dense and impenetrable document. I have years of experience of interrogating financial information but it was impossible for me to use the documentation provided by the Minister to hold him to account, which is part of my constitutional role. As for evidence-based policy making, Deputy McDonald summed it up. Policy making may be based on evidence but any evidence is being kept from us. The Minister explicitly refused to share evidence of policy making with me. When he announced the capital expenditure programme, which involves a vast amount of money, I asked for a technical appendix, a cost-benefit analysis and decision criteria but he told me I could not have these details because they would be too complicated for me to understand. That is just one example. I do not buy the claim that the Government has completely modernised the process by building in performance-related budgeting and bringing evidence-based policy making to the forefront of public service. I certainly do not see these reforms as a Member of the Oireachtas.

Deputy Sean Fleming's arguments are well made. There is a huge amount of non-voted expenditure that the Dáil does not get to see.

This practice must be stopped.

I draw the Minister of State's attention to subsections 1(5) and (8), which neatly segue into the culture underpinning the legislation. Subsection (5) reads: "The Minister for Finance shall, on behalf of the Government, inform Dáil Éireann of a decision under subsection (2) or (3) as soon as may be after the decision is made." Subsection (8) is identical except in respect of the subsections to which it refers. Under the Constitution, Dáil Éireann is the only institution in the State which may authorise public expenditure. The previous Government, with the support of the current Government parties, passed an Act which bypassed the Dáil and provided that the Minister for Finance can spend any amount of money on the banks, for any reason and at any time. We are now €64 billion into that particular act of lunacy. The only requirement the legislation imposed on the Minister was that he must inform Dáil Éireann of his intentions. Similarly, the legislation before us does not require Dáil approval for the various binding estimates, ceilings and important multi-annual targets. On the contrary, it provides that the Government, having agreed such measures, will inform the House of what is to be done. We are, therefore, hard-wiring the problem in the early Act into this legislation.

Let us address the culture behind the Bill. Last week, I asked the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, a question on the stability programme update, an important financial document which, as in the case of the expenditure in the Bill, is a multi-annual medium-term estimate that is submitted to the European Commission. The Commission may return the document with binding country-specific recommendations. When I asked if the Dáil could be given more notice than the two and a half hours we received this year and if the committee could be given more than one hour to debate the document, he stated he had brought it to the committee "at the first available opportunity" and that I had not been "inhibited in any way whatsoever" before describing my intervention as "a wrangle about process rather than dealing with the document", which was, he said, "a waste of time." I was allowed to speak for five minutes, having received the document only two hours before the committee met. It was subsequently submitted to the Commission as it had been presented to committee and without proper Oireachtas oversight. The Minister placed the document under our noses one hour before it was e-mailed to Brussels and basically told me to stop wasting his time. He refused to give me any comfort on my request that Deputies be allowed to scrutinise what was a very important document.

Two weeks ago, I asked the Taoiseach if the budget would be signed off on 15 October, to which he replied in the affirmative. The point of the European semester is to co-ordinate and try to drive good budgetary practice into countries such as Ireland. Under the current requirement, a draft budget must be submitted to Brussels by 15 October. In other countries, a draft will be submitted to the Commission and subsequently debated in the national parliament, where it will be changed through parliamentary input and oversight, before being passed in December. This is not the process we are adopting. Instead, the Government has decided to avoid parliamentary oversight and bring the budget forward to the day on which the draft document must be submitted to Brussels.

Some months ago at a committee meeting, I asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, if he would consider including in one of the forthcoming referendums a question on removing from the Constitution the preposterous provision that only Ministers may propose amendments that incur charges on the State. Deputies may not propose any amendments that would give rise to a cost. The Minister declined my suggestion on the basis that every Deputy would spend time making silly proposals that would either cost a substantial amount or result in tax reductions.

As Deputy McDonald noted, last year's budget is a perfect example of the culture of locking Parliament, including Deputies from all sides, out of the budgetary process. Guillotines were used for every measure and Deputies were given practically no time to speak on the social welfare, finance and local government tax Bills, all of which were rushed through the House.

I am not sure why the Minister is not present. Perhaps the Minister of State, Deputy McGinley, who is not in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, will inform the Minister that Labour Party, Fine Gael and Opposition backbench Deputies want a modern budgetary process introduced. Contrary to the Minister's claim that he has already done this, the culture at the top - namely, in the Economic Management Council - has not changed. The council is controlling and stifling debate and shutting out the Oireachtas. This practice is repeated in the Bill in the provision that the "Minister for Finance shall, on behalf of the Government, inform Dáil Éireann of a decision".

I ask the Minister of State to relay to the Minister a number of proposals. First, the budget should not be passed in October and, second, the stability programme update should not be waved under the noses of members of the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform one hour before it is sent off to Brussels next year. I emphasise that the European Commission can make binding recommendations based on this document. I also fully concur with calls for the Government to introduce equality budgeting.

If we want to have best practice, we should examine a report on the matter issued by the OECD, which states: "In no case should this be less than three months prior to the start of the fiscal year." As Deputy Sean Fleming noted, we will receive this year's Estimates in June. The report continues: "Non-financial performance data, including performance targets, should be presented for expenditure programmes where practicable." While this is being done to some extent, I have not seen anything I could usefully use to hold a Minister or Department to account. The OECD also recommends that "comparative information on actual revenue and expenditure during the past year and an updated forecast for the current year should be provided for each programme." It states that monthly reports should be prepared showing progress in implementing the budget and a parliamentary budget office should be established, which would allow Government backbench Members and the Opposition to properly interrogate budgets.

This legislation has been introduced because the European Union requires us to do so. Underpinning the Bill, however, is a culture whereby the Government is in charge and there is nothing for Dáil Éireann to see in it. While I accept the budgetary process is improving, I repudiate the idea that we are even close to good international practice, because the culture at the top of government is stifling the House and preventing it from doing its job.

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