asked the Minister for Finance if he will make a statement on his intention to introduce a multi-budget method of financing State expenditure.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Financing of State Expenditure.
19.
Our present system of budgeting from year to year does not help us to assess the overall effects of policy decisions on expenditure in future years or to align expenditure with likely resources. Also most expenditure is largely committed at budget time and the scope for changing the volume and composition of expenditure is relatively limited. The Government have been considering for some time how budgetary procedure might be improved. The White Paper published on Public Capital Expenditure in 1965 (Pr. 8562) referred to a need for what it called "forward looks" at expenditure. The Third Programme for Economic and Social Development referred also to the need for programming and analysing public expenditure and said that practical experimentation was being commenced in selected Departments with a view to the development of a multi-annual programme budgeting system. Experiments in this regard are well under way in various Departments but, since it will take some years before a comprehensive programme budgeting system can be fully operational, the Government decided, as an interim measure, to introduce a more simplified form of multi-annual budgeting right away. This will involve extending the present annual expenditure estimates for a further two years ahead—that is estimating for three years in all—and making provisional allocations in respect of these estimates based on a projection of resources. The forward estimates will be reviewed each year by reference to the final allocations made in the annual budget for the first year of the three.
The new budgeting procedure will enable more systematic control to be exercised over expenditure in the light of expected resources and will enable Departments to plan their expenditure programmes more effectively and with greater certainty about the availability of finance.
The usual procedures for the submission of Departmental estimates to Dáil Éireann will not be affected.
Is it not true that at the present time the Government cannot even estimate for six months ahead never mind estimating for three years ahead? In each of the last three or four years we have had a second Budget in the months of October or November. Will the Government not put their own house in order first and try to estimate correctly for at least a year ahead before they attempt what is for them the enormous task of estimating for three years ahead?
That problem may have been contributed to by the over-heating——
The over-heating of the Fianna Fáil Party.
——of the economy due to the hot air we have been hearing from Deputy L'Estrange.
Further arising out of the Minister's reply——
I am calling Question No. 20. Deputy L'Estrange should allow Questions to continue.
(Interruptions.)
The business of the country has been neglected by the Government for the last three years because of the internal over-heating that has taken place in Fianna Fáil——
I would again ask Deputy L'Estrange to allow Questions to continue. I have called Question No. 20.
We heard before about low standards in high places. All the problems have been caused by the internal over-heating in Fianna Fáil——
I want to ask a serious supplementary question in reply to the Minister's long answer. Is not all the verbiage to which we have been subjected by the Minister merely an indication of the desire of the Government to go in for secrecy so that they can hide from the people the awful financial position of the country?
I thought the Deputy said he had a serious supplementary question to ask.
It is serious.