Niall Ó Brolcháin (Green Party)

I welcome the Minister. There is an element of motherhood and apple pie with regard to this recommendation. As somebody who has worked as a cost accountant in the past, I agree with the need for cost benefit analyses and I commend the Labour Party on bringing forward the recommendation. The notion of a cost benefit analysis for almost every aspect of government is crucial and there should be more of them. I see this as an administrative function and I hope the Minister will give a commitment today that a cost benefit analysis will be done. However, it seems unnecessary to include the requirement in the legislation. We do not need to include every administrative function that should happen into legislation. This is particularly relevant with regard to the one month clause. This Bill is likely to be passed today, which means that we would have to have the report by 29 February, which does not exist this year. There would also be a three-week election campaign in that time. I presume the recommendation means the report should be done by Tuesday, 1 March. It would be lovely to see a cost benefit analysis done by that time, but the one-month timeframe is impractical. I hope the Labour Party accepts the spirit of consensus with regard to a proper cost benefit analysis-----