Cowen reveals plans on budget information

Budgetary process: The Minister for Finance Brian Cowen has announced reforms to the budgetary process which will give the Opposition earlier and more in-depth information about the Government's plans.

From January 2006, Mr Cowen is to meet the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service "to discuss the economic and fiscal background to this and the next two budgets".

In the following autumn, his department will update its three-year economic and fiscal projections and publish them in place of the existing Economic Review and Outlook. The review and outlook deals only with the current year.

Mr Cowen said that, from 2007, Ministers will publish annual statements on the outputs and objectives of their departments.

From 2008, the Ministers will publish the actual outturns. The statements will be presented to the relevant Oireachtas committee along with the department's estimates.

"After these individual examinations, the Finance and Public Service Committee would co-ordinate the preparation of a report to the Dáil on the deliberations," Mr Cowen said.

He said that he believed these proposals would go a long way to meeting the desires of all sides of the House for better debate, better scrutiny and better results from the raising of tax and the spending of public money in the State.

Mr Cowen will write to Opposition spokespersons on finance and to party whips to invite them to a detailed briefing on the principles and the issues involved in implementing the reform proposals.

The Minister had indicated last year that he was open to reviewing the budgetary process.

"I also made it plain that any changes would have to allow for the clear right and duty of the Government to direct and manage the budgetary process itself."

He said his Government had no difficulty with giving an account of its stewardship.

"Such accountability can only reasonably take place on the basis of action that has been taken, and not on the basis of proposals involving spending yet to happen.

"It is for the Government to decide and to act, and for the Dáil to hold us to account as provided for in the Constitution," Mr Cowen said.

Having reviewed the matter, the Minister said, the Government had decided to put its proposals to the House.

He said that he believed that the proposals, once bedded down, would lay the ground work for a more unified Budget approach in the future.

The measures go some way to meeting the demands of the Opposition parties for greater involvement in the Budget process. Fine Gael has called for the scrapping of "the charade of Budget day".