Tom Shehan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. The Bill allows the Government to anchor its already operational multi-annual expenditure limits in national law. This is a requirement under the EU-IMF programme of financial support for Ireland. Specifically, the Bill amends the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act 2011, and in doing so provides for medium-term expenditure management in Ireland through expenditure ceilings. We have climbed a mountain, in economic terms, in recent years. When we came into government we inherited a broken economy. We have worked hard to turn it around. It has been a slow process but progress is being made.

We continue to meet or exceed all of our fiscal targets under the EU-IMF programme. We must continue to push forward the reforms which are necessary for the country to recover its economic sovereignty. While we are making significant progress, the Exchequer deficit so far this year stands at more than €4 billion. This is not a sustainable level of borrowing and the Government remains steadfast in its commitment to balance the books while introducing positive, sensible and prudent reforms.

I admire the savings made by the Minister of State with regard to procurement.

Millions of euro have been saved there but one must ask why that was not done years ago.

We need to be smarter in how we deliver public services and to treat every cent of taxpayers' money as if it was our last. Hardworking taxpayers expect no less. We need a system which is focused on equality and fairness, where waste is a thing of the past.

This Government has been in office for more than two years and during this short time, we have introduced a number of important budgetary reforms aimed at enhancing the openness and transparency of the budgetary framework and improving expenditure management across Departments which had throughout the good times been allowed to lapse into disorder, although it was not just Governments. I think every household in the country, in some form, got carried away with budgetary matters. In short, we are making progress but we realise we have a long way to go to clean up the mess we found on entering Government. We have completely modernised and reformed the annual Estimates process, built performance-related information into the heart of the budgetary documentation and brought evidence-based policymaking to the forefront of public service delivery.

This Bill when enacted will put the ceilings established in the medium term expenditure framework on a solid statutory footing through the amendment of section 17 of the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act 2012. This Bill logically follows on the introduction of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2012 which gives full effect to the rules contained in the Treaty on Stability, Co­ordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union passed by the people, otherwise known as the fiscal stability treaty.

I commend the Minister of State on his efforts in regard to this Bill and offer my support on same, although I might have one or two queries. I concur with much of what Senator Darragh O'Brien said in that during the Celtic tiger years, if there was an overspend in Departments, they just borrowed more. If one's car broke down, one just bought a new one or if the woman of the house demanded decking, one just got it. There was no budgetary process in households and it was the same in government.

Our colleague, Senator Sean Barrett, always looks for cost-benefit analyses and value for money reports, which is one of his strong points. We get many value for money reports but a cost-benefit analysis is a completely different animal, and for a long time Senator Sean Barrett has been pushing that.

Senator Darragh O'Brien mentioned capital spending and much good work was done but where is the millennium clock?