Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It is relevant that neither is present. The Minister, Deputy Noonan, stated that he would take on board feedback from the Chamber. How can we give meaningful feedback with approximately two hours' preparation, no meeting with Department of Finance officials and no briefings? It cannot be done. Even if it could, how could the Ministers possibly take our feedback and incorporate it into this document? The Minister, Deputy Noonan, stated that the document had to be with the European Commission by tomorrow or Friday at the latest.

I am calling out what is happening. This is meant to be new politics and political reform. Last autumn, the OECD drafted a thorough review of Ireland's budgetary process.

It states: "To be effective, the measures proposed above [namely, the measures coming out of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform for better parliamentary engagement] will need to be underpinned by a renewed commitment by Government, at political and administrative levels, to engage with the Oireachtas as a partner throughout the budget process." It is difficult to explain quite how I feel about what is going on here this morning without using unparliamentary language so I will leave it at that. What is before us is nonsense. It is an insult to the Dáil, the Independents and the political parties. The finance spokespeople or other appointed Members would gladly have met finance officials and the two relevant Ministers. This is important stuff.

On the back page of the documentation, page 47, there is a copy of the letter from Professor John McHale in his capacity as chairman of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. It is dated 20 April. That was quite some time ago as it is now 27 April. A week ago, Professor McHale was able to write to the general secretary and state the council was provided with the SPU forecast on 7 April, which is 20 days ago. Twenty days ago, the Department gave these figures to the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. Seven days ago, the council wrote back to the Department and said it was broadly satisfied with its projections. Today, the day before the document must legally be sent to Europe, we in the Dáil finally get to see it and debate it without either of the Ministers present. I actually had several questions for the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, based on what they had to say.

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