Patrick Nulty (Dublin West, Independent)
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224. To ask the Minister for Finance his plans to equality proof Budget 2014; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39829/13]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware, the Programme for Government does contain a commitment to require all public bodies to take due note of equality and human rights in carrying out their functions. Furthermore, the Cabinet handbook requires a statement on the likely effects of the decision sought on equality and persons experiencing or at risk of poverty or social exclusion to be included in Memoranda to Government. Consequently, Government does consider each of these important issues at an individual policy or programme level. Furthermore, I would remind the Deputy that the State and its bodies take the provisions of equality legislation into account in the development and delivery of policies and services. I would also like to inform the Deputy that, in line with previous years, a distributional analysis of proposed budget measures is being performed based on various income levels for the different categories of income earners. These categories include single individuals, married one-earner couples with no children and married one-earner couples with children. A distributional analysis which models the impacts on disposable income by income decile using SWITCH, the ESRI Tax-Benefit model, is also undertaken in evaluating various budgetary options. Illustrative examples will be included in the Budget 2014 document.