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

Part of the Minister’s political reform agenda was that there would be discussions at committee level in advance of the budget. He is not facilitating this because he is not providing any information to allow it to happen. We have talk about a greater role for Oireachtas scrutiny but it can only happen after the Budget Statement is delivered.

I also hope there will be more transparency when the Estimates are published this year than there was last year. The Government produced an invalid health Estimate on the floor of the House on last year’s budget day which was made clear within 24 hours by the Health Service Executive. It was announced there would be a medical card probity review and everyone knew the Government would require a Supplementary Estimate as a result.

A footnote in the review last year stated savings from additional resources and other services would achieve €600 million. No details of this were contained in any of the budget documents delivered on budget day. We were only able to get the details of some of this by way of parliamentary questions. Although the Government does publish budgetary information, it keeps quite a lot back at the same time.

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