John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Ó Cuív lent me his pen and the Ceann Comhairle acted as witness to the return of the said ballpoint. These are cherished items.

I am a member of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. We had the director of the Office of Budgetary Oversight in today. I am sure the officials will be interested. They have probably read the director's report at this stage. They should not say they have or else they will completely steal my thunder. There were some interesting observations from the office. No more than the novel aspects of your election, a Cheann Comhairle, in this Dáil, the Office of Budgetary Oversight is a new departure. The director is already demonstrating an independence and objectivity. Her comments on the budget as produced by the Government were interesting and I will advert to some of them briefly.

The Government outlined a number of areas of spending and where it proposes to raise revenue in order to cover that spending. Even on the night of the budget, the stamp duty on non-residential property transactions raised a few queries from Deputies, particularly those representing farming interests. The Government expects to raise about €376 million in 2018. The Office of Budgetary Oversight suggests that this is a static estimate and there can be behavioural change as a result of the change in policy to be expected in response to that tax increase. It also points out that any exemptions introduced would reduce the expected yield. The officials and the Minister may have to revise the anticipated revenue from that.

Deputy Ó Cuív already covered the issue of mortgage interest relief. It is relief that is often taken for granted by householders. It will be tapered out. Thanks to those who negotiated the supply and confidence agreement on this side of the House, that has been rescued in the short term.

Another revenue-raising measure the Minister for Finance referred to on budget day was the introduction of a sugar tax and the increase in excise duty on tobacco. The director of the Office of Budgetary Oversight had a few comments to make on this given that the figures are so critical to paying for the increased spending announced in the budget. She outlined how the increase in tobacco excise duty could actually reduce revenue by up to €40 million owing to behavioural change. Have departmental officials factored that in?

When the Minister appeared before the Committee on Budgetary Oversight, I asked him if he was a consumer of fizzy drinks. I think he might have missed the point. I can understand the justification for putting a tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, the budgetary oversight director points out what is blindingly obvious to anybody, which is that the estimate of the revenue to be raised by the new sugar-sweetened drinks tax is difficult to assess as it is a new tax and there will likely be a behavioural response to the introduction of that new tax. Has that been factored in? Of course, there is no tax on the alternative.

On the fiscal space and the discretionary measures, the budgetary office suggests that in the interests of proper planning and management consideration could be given in future budgets to having some contingency built into budgetary numbers. There is no space either side of the fiscal space in this budget. There is no wriggle room.

That feeds back to the last point I made. I speak as a layman. I am not a financial expert by any means. The tax-raising measures may not meet the targets the Minister has set. The Office of Budgetary Oversight also highlights that if the rate of increase of staff numbers in the public service continues at 3%, there will be consequences on expenditure.

There are some practical points on the presentation of the budget. One of the reasons I am bringing this to the floor of the House is that it can get lost in committee.

This point relates to budget transparency. The director of the budgetary office suggests that one way of improving parliamentary engagement with the budget process, in other words, improving budgetary scrutiny and accountability, is the simplification of the presentation of complex budget information. I for one echo the director's call for that. She goes on to say that in the context of achieving a more effective level of parliamentary engagement, the budget documentation presented on budget day is unduly lengthy and complex. The final point she outlines is that the information presented within the core 300 pages of the budget is not always set out in a transparent manner and greater emphasis could be placed on presenting the most relevant information in a way which is easier to navigate. That is coming from the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. It has taken three quarters of my speaking time to outline this issue but it is important. It is also important that this information is fed back and I know the Minister of State will get it in a report. I know that the office engages with the Minister, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI. It is important this is put on record in the context of this debate.

I now have fewer than three minutes to talk about some issues close to home and from a constituency perspective. I was in the environs of this House, although not a Member of it, for a number of years when debates on the Finance Bill, some might say, went on for weeks, but those debates were guillotined. I do not welcome the guillotining of the debate because there is much to be said and sometimes it is the only opportunity Deputies get to raise particular issues. I will raise a few issues with the Minister of State. One comment I have heard from families who are not in receipt of social welfare is that 1 September, the first day back to school, has become the new Christmas for many families in terms of the expenditure they face in buying school uniforms, school books and materials for school projects. Many people have said that provisions in this regard should be available to a wider range of people and not only people who are availing of social welfare payments. Families who are fortunate enough to afford a holiday head straight back into the back to school season and it is incredibly onerously expensive.

Another matter that has been close to my heart for a number of years is the apprenticeship programme. There are 285,000 students in third level institutions in this country but only 11,500 are apprentices. When Mr. Coffey from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council appeared before the Committee on Budgetary Oversight he said that with unemployment at 5%, there are very few trades left within that 5% cohort. There could have been engagement in terms of those programmes three or four years ago and those apprentices would be graduating now, having come through the programmes. They would be available to build the houses we need to build and engage in the construction programmes we need construct.

I could spend an hour speaking about transport. Major work needs to be done in the area of transport. I am not enthralled by some of the measures provided because they are not being addressed in the budget with sufficient urgency.

As my party's spokesperson for Dublin, I want to highlight the area of tourism and the different attitude of the Government towards tourism and agriculture. It can be seen in the research and development spend of both Departments. If we consider the research and development spend in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, under one of the headings, it is close to €350 million odd and yet during the crash and recession the most resilient product we had in this country was tourism. It was incredibly resilient and we still failed to invest significant amounts in it. Only small amounts were invested in research and development in tourism as an economic product for the country. I agree with what Deputy Ó Cuív said about JobPath.

In terms of our two-tier recovery, a cohort of people are doing well but the Government needs to be aware that there are many people who manage quite okay from month to month but if an unexpected bill arrives, if the fridge breaks down or the car needs a service that the family was not anticipating, it causes havoc in the family finances. We need to take any measures we can to ensure future budgets, like the last two, are progressive and that we do not have regressive budgets like those we had for the previous five years.

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