Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak in Dáil Éireann on this inaugural spring economic statement. It is important when having this debate today and over the course of this week to remind ourselves and the House exactly what this statement is and what it is not. This is real and tangible budget reform in action. The spring statement is not a budget, nor was it ever meant to be, but it is an important part in reforming our budget process and ensuring that we have the most up to date information available for Members on all sides of the House, for stakeholders in society and for citizens at large. It will enable informed and reasoned debate about how best to use the resources available in this country to ensure we deliver the services our people need, expect and deserve.

For some on the Opposition benches - the empty Opposition benches - it is a case of "be careful what you wish for" because time and again, year in and year out, the budget process has been rightly criticised by Members on all sides of the House, our constituents, the Irish people and the media. We have now done what people said they wanted done. Deputies said they needed more information, input and data. They now have the data to make a reasoned and informed political debate and while we will not agree on everything, we all know now the parameters that Ireland can expect economically out to 2020.

I have heard people say over the course of the past 24 hours that there is nothing new in this document. Fair play to them if they knew every statistic in this document, if they were able to project and predict employment growth out to 2020 and if they knew what our tax revenue and our expenditure would be, because I certainly did not. If Deputies are honest they would agree that we did not have that level of detail before the spring economic statement was undertaken. That is important.

We have laid a comprehensive document before the House which puts it up to all of us to show the Irish people how we would best spend their scarce resources, what we would prioritise, who will pay for it and how we will alleviate the burden of tax on many hard-pressed families.

I look forward to the budget process reforming even further. If we are serious about not going back to the mistakes of the past, ending boom and bust, ending auction politics and making sure that never again can any political party use the Department of Finance like some sort of party political election headquarters and splurge before an election without any sense of responsibility to the Irish people, this document provides the framework for all of us, regardless of our political views, to outline how we would deliver services while ensuring we live within the resources available to this country.

I look forward to the process reforming even further. Page 42 of the spring economic statement usefully outlines how budget 2016 will now work. Rather than having one big bang speech where the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform turn up in the Dáil some day in October and announce the budget, we had the spring economic statement yesterday which sets out the broad parameters. We heard today from the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the leaders of the Opposition and other Members of this House in terms of what they would like to see prioritised.

In July we will have a national economic dialogue where we will invite all the stakeholders to come together to give their views and say, "This is the amount of money available to the Irish people. What would you like it spent on?". That will be important. People will be invited to make pre-budget submissions all of which will be published so there will be full transparency. We will then have the budget in October followed by the debate on the legislation, the law that will turn the budget into a reality, between October and the end of the year. That is budget reform.

We need to go further, which is why I welcome the commitment of the Minister for Finance in this regard. We need to work together on all sides of the House to ensure that Members can have their ideas costed. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. Whether one is a Member of the Opposition or a non-ministerial Member of Fine Gael or Labour, it is important that one can have an idea costed and verified independently. I welcome the comments of the Minister for Finance in that regard.

It is also important to say that the spring economic statement before the House is not just a statistical document. While there are many useful and important statistics in it, it does more than simply set statistics out. It sends an important message to Irish citizens that austerity has ended. I have heard people scoff at this idea. Austerity means one is spending less money, reducing services and not expanding one's budget. The statement builds on what we did in the last budget which is to say we can afford to expand - not to splurge - our budgets again. In that sense and by the definition of the word, austerity has ended. The time of cutbacks is over and there will be no more tax rises and no new charges. There will be a general election next year, but the document sets out that if people follow the course, there will be no need for new taxes or charges. That is laid out very clearly. This did not happen by accident. There has been an attempt by some over the last 24 hours to suggest that time is a great healer and that if one turns up and allows enough days to rumble by, the economy will get better itself. That is an insulting position to take apart from being somewhat economically illiterate. It is insulting to the Irish people who sacrificed far too much and had to deal with very many difficult situations over several years and two Governments to arrive at this point. It is their sacrifices coupled with the policies the Government pursued that allow us now to look to the future.

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