Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan must find it a little surreal to be having praise heaped on her tonight, and justifiably so, from every side of the House. It is very well deserved. She is respected on all sides of this House as an individual who is extremely sincere in her commitment. I echo Deputy Clare Daly's comments on Deputy O'Sullivan's human rights record and I have seen some of that with her work with UEPA in this House and in countries like Mozambique. I am grateful to have an opportunity to participate and engage with her on this motion this evening.

Some common ground, perhaps more than some would like to admit, has been reached during this debate on the importance of social impact assessments of budgets and the importance of examining the social impact of decisions as we move forward. The word "timely" has been used and this debate certainly is timely. We have moved on from the troika programme and there is an economic recovery and I accept that one can argue the benefits of it, but there are economic metrics. The Government has choices. When one has choices and is in an era of recovery in terms of the issue assessment and making sure that recovery is shared out, it is appropriate we would have this debate and discuss this issue.

I emphasise that the overall goal of the Government's policy has been to put the public finances on a sound footing and to return the economy to growth, not only growth in terms of GDP but in terms of jobs, which the Government believes is the best way to help the most vulnerable in the country. We have already seen the benefits of this approach in the very strong employment performances in the past number of years with more than 80,000 people now at work compared with a low point of early 2012, according to statistics only published today in the Quarterly National Household Survey from the CSO.

Deputy Catherine Murphy talked about targets, and I am not sure if this was the point she was making, but at times we on all sides of this House and those in the media can become so obsessed with talking about targets, figures and numbers that perhaps we forget that there are people behind each of those targets. We can argue this whatever way people wish to argue it, but 80,000 more people have jobs. They are not only targets or numbers behind each number is a real person and story. Wee in this House sometimes fail to make that connection between the macro figure and the real life impact, and that works in both directions.

I must also emphasise to Deputies that through this period of fiscal adjustment the Government has endeavoured to protect the most vulnerable in so far as possible. When one takes out €30 billion of an extraction from the economy in terms of taxes and cuts over a number of years, it is almost impossible for that not to have an impact on every family in the country. it has been a difficult number of years for people but we have taken efforts to try to protect the most vulnerable. During the debate yesterday a question was raised over whether certain budgets over the period of adjustment were progressive or regressive.

On this question, I point to the most recently available analysis by the ESRI published after budget 2015 which covers the budgets from 2009 to 2015. This indicates that in terms of household income distribution the top quintile, or one fifth, of households lost almost 14% of their disposable income. This compares to losses of approximately 10% for the other quintiles on lower incomes. That is not to suggest that there was not a loss or that the impact was not severe. However, given the many statistics we have heard during this debate, those are ones worth noting too. In addition, the ESRI has also produced research showing that over budgets 2009 to 2013 there were no materially different impacts between genders. Gender is an issue that arose during the context of this debate last night. This reflects the fact that the tax and welfare system does not discriminate based on gender.

More generally, the Government recognises the importance of building the capacity to understand the varying impacts of budgetary policy. With this in mind, the capacity of Government Departments to conduct more advanced distributional analysis is continually being explored and expanded. The steering group for the SWITCH model run by the ESRI includes representatives from the Departments of Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, Social Protection and Health. For example, the SWITCH model is currently being expanded to include the ability to analyse the housing assistance payment as well as medical cards. This builds on previous expansions to include the ability to model water charges and the property tax. These changes can only benefit our capacity to understand the impacts of budgetary policy as well as wider Government policy. This is something which I hope can be welcomed by Members on all sides.

I note the emphasis the motion puts on human rights and their place in formulating budgets. This Government also acknowledges the importance of human rights in wider policy formulation and not only as part of the budget process. For this reason, the programme for Government contains a commitment to require all public bodies to take due note of equality and human rights in carrying out their functions. Furthermore, the Cabinet handbook requires a statement on the likely effects of the decision sought on equality and persons experiencing or at risk of poverty or social exclusion to be included in all memoranda to Government.

This is an area we need to continue to develop and keep under close scrutiny as we enter a period of economic recovery. Deputy Catherine Murphy spoke of the need for a vision for the future. While we might disagree on how to get there, there is more common ground between us than we would like to admit in terms of what is that vision.

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