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

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I thank my colleagues on the Committee on Budgetary Oversight for their contributions. I would like to emphasise a few of the points that have been made. I ask the Minister of State to remind the Minister that he has not responded to the committee's report. The committee looks forward to his response and to that of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

I note what the Minister of State said about the organic nature of budgeting when he was responding to what I said in my opening remarks about the Committee on Budgetary Oversight's disappointment regarding the Minister's failure to include an equality budgeting statement in his Budget Statement. The Minister has committed to doing this in 2020. The Minister of State spoke about the amount of work that is going on in the background as part of the efforts to deal with gender budgeting issues within each Department. I suggest that this would have made it even more incumbent on the Minister to include a more comprehensive gender budgeting statement in the budget 2019 presentation, even as a gesture. The Minister has not responded to the Committee on Budgetary Oversight on this matter.

I would like to respond to Deputy Burton's remark about "technical language". I do not want to labour the issue. My colleagues have made the point. As I stated earlier, when Deputy Burton was serving as a female Minister for Social Protection in 2012, she, either wittingly or unwittingly, introduced measures in pensions legislation that were particularly gender-biased and had a disproportionately significant penalising effect on women than on men, although some men were penalised by the measures in question.

I call on the Minister to initiate a report into the economic role of women in Irish society, as recommended by the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. It is really important for the committee's message in this regard to be delivered. We have garnered some experience from the Scottish Parliament in this area.

As this is our first opportunity to debate the Committee on Budgetary Oversight's report with the Minister of State, I would like to raise a few general issues with him. My colleagues on the committee would not forgive me if I failed to do so. I am not talking about individual measures in the budget. One of the criticisms levelled at politicians and office holders during and after the economic crash was that advices from eminent organisations and individuals were not heeded in advance of the crash, or certainly in the lead-up to the height of the crash. Between April and September, various eminent witnesses came before the committee. The chairman of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council appeared on a number of occasions. We heard from stakeholders from the ESRI and many other bodies. It was clear as long ago as April that certain key budgetary themes were emerging, including Ireland's vulnerability in the area of corporation tax, the importance of taking some steps in the area of carbon tax because of our climate change obligations - the equalisation of diesel and petrol measures was one such step - and the need to consider Brexit budget measures. All of those themes were fudged in the budget. They were not dealt with in any kind of significant way. Some of them, including carbon tax measures, were put off for another year. These issues were highlighted again and again at meetings of the committee.

I have referred to Ireland's vulnerability in the area of corporation tax. It is important that we do not continue to depend on this tax. We must remember the consequences of our over-dependence on it previously. Significant steps were not taken in respect of this tax. Equally, the Minister and the Government have not come back to the committee with concrete proposals for how the rainy-day fund will be used. Will it be used as a counter-cyclical tool, as a contingency fund or as an economic buffer?

We have been given some indication that the Minister for Finance will meet the Minister for Health three or four times a year to try to keep tabs on the health budget, but aside from that the overrun in that budget has not been mentioned. The committee has not received details of, or information on, any particular structure to be used by the Minister or the Department as part of their efforts to control spending in the Department of Health. Successive Ministers for Health have failed to control health spending over a period of 20 years.

The corporation tax windfall in advance of budget 2019 is particularly important. I have not run my concerns in this regard by the members of the committee, but I know they will share them. The Minister was good enough to come before us on a number of occasions. The corporation tax windfall in advance of budget 2019 was entirely predictable because it arose from a technical accounting change. We know that such a windfall will not occur again. The committee is concerned that the discovery of this windfall at such a late hour in the budgetary cycle meant that the committee did not have an opportunity to scrutinise the windfall figures or interrogate the manner in which the windfall will be utilised on behalf of society or the economy.

I would not be forgiven if I had not made these supplementary points now that the opportunity has arisen. The Minister of State might inform the Minister and his officials that we do not intend to let any of these issues go between now and Christmas. We are very exercised about them. Each of them is very important. There is no point in having a committee such as ours, which meets regularly up to a week or a fortnight before the budget, if it cannot make any input or engage in any oversight when approximately €1 billion is discovered the night before the budget.

The Committee on Budgetary Oversight is committed to its work and will continue to make progress with, promote and monitor the integration of gender-budgeting and other gender equality measures into the annual budgetary process. The committee hopes that by having the tools available to analyse the impact of various budgetary options in the future, it can try to avoid policy decisions which have an adverse impact on women and other people on the margins of society.

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