Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. Nobody is arguing that we did not have a necessity for additional spending in recent years. The issue is the means by which the Government has presented the spending. The Minister will recall the phrase used by IFAC after budget 2024, when it described the way in which expenditure was presented to the House as a form of "fiscal gimmickry". This was a very serious accusation to make. The Parliament has very limited function in real terms in the making of budgets and holding the Government to account. It is becoming much more difficult. We have had four different kinds of description of spending in budgets in recent years and look at what applied to budget 2024. We have had core spending, non-core spending, windfall capital investment and once-off cost-of-living measures. In the interests of accountability and transparency in terms of how budgets are presented, I ask the Minister to look again at how budget 2025 will be presented to the House and do it in a different way.

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