Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputies will be aware that this amendment was tabled on Committee Stage last week. I understand that on that occasion my ministerial colleague, Deputy Noonan, discussed the issue in some detail with members of the committee. In the initial debate on this amendment earlier today, Deputies Pearse Doherty and Boyd Barrett referred to equality budgeting and the need to evaluate the impact of budgets on different groups within society. I am pleased to say, however, that a substantial amount of that analysis covering some of the groups the Deputies have listed has already been published.

Following on from the Government's undertaking in November 2014 to carry out a social impact assessment of the main tax and welfare measures in budgets, a number of improvements have been made to the social impact assessment which the Department of Social Protection conducts on each budget. I hope that is recognised by Members on both sides of the House. This year, the assessment was completed in consultation with the Department of Finance in respect of the income tax elements of the budget. The publication was also brought forward considerably to 4 November, just three weeks after budget day and in advance of the Oireachtas discussions on both this Bill and the Social Welfare Bill.

Using the ESRI's tax-welfare simulation model, Switch, the social impact assessment includes a breakdown between the impact of tax and welfare measures respectively, as well as presenting the overall distributional impact of budget 2016 by both income group and family type. It also examines the impact of the budget on the at-risk-of-poverty rate and on work incentives, as well as the impact of the change in the minimum wage.

Expansion of the Switch model has also, importantly, enabled the incorporation this year of investment in the early childhood care in education scheme, ECCE, into the social impact assessment. The distributional impact by family type in the family Switch model facilitates comparisons between the distributional impact of the budget on families with and without children, by employment or retirement status, and for lone parents. All of these are presented in the social impact assessment.

The full report is available on the Department of Social Protection's website. Deputies may wish to note some of the key findings of the assessment: in total 98% of households benefit from budget 2016; households with children are the biggest beneficiaries of the budget, in particular working lone parents; social transfers continue to perform strongly in reducing poverty; and, compared to previous years, budget 2016 delivers considerably bigger gains for the poorest households.

At this time, it is not possible to use the Switch model to assess the impact of budgets on groups of people based on their disability status which is, I accept, an important point. As the Minister for Finance has pointed out before, there are already significant efforts under way to expand the capacity of the model. This is evidenced by the work which has allowed modelling of medical cards and the ECCE scheme.

Deputies will also be well aware that the budget book includes a range of material addressing distributional issues and explaining the impact of budget 2016. There is a series of tables showing the impact of budgetary measures at a range of income levels for different income earners. There are a variety of illustrative cases providing examples of the change in net incomes for a variety of sample households. The extent to which income is redistributed through the tax and welfare systems, and the progressivity of the income tax system, are also addressed in that budget documentation.

Whilst we may not agree on the budget and we may have different perspectives concerning it, there is clearly a lot of information out there on which we have built in recent years. On the basis that much of the analysis proposed in the amendment has already been published, the Minister does not propose to accept this amendment.

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