Noonan: I can’t promise leaks to Germany won’t occur again

FINANCE Minister Michael Noonan has said there is no way he could promise last week’s leaking of Irish budgetary proposals to German politicians would never happen again.

He said to get the money it needed, the Government had to submit papers which were sent to countries across Europe and he could not make guarantees on the conduct of other parties.

“I can’t give you a commitment that there won’t be leaks in the future because to get the money we require, a lot of documents are generated and they are all over the European countries. We can’t control what happens them (documents) once they leave our hands,” Mr Noonan said.

He said Europe has to be discreet, but on this occasion the proposal to raise VAT to 23% got out.

Mr Noonan said the German supreme court had held that parliament as well as the government had to be involved in the decision-making process. “In general terms, if things go to governments, they usually stay confidential. If things go to parliament with 40 members on the committee, and somebody says there is a good story here, off we go. It happens in the Irish parliament as well.”

Mr Noonan said it would be impossible to respond to media stories possible about cuts in children’s allowances and social welfare payments because otherwise he would be out every day making explanations.

He said no final decision had been taken on the budget and the only thing he was definite about was his proposal to increase VAT to 23%.

Similarly, a cut in child benefit was not ruled out by Social Protection Minister Joan Burton.

Ms Burton refused to either confirm or deny reports that the payment would be reduced by €10 across the board in the December 6 budget.

She said the matter was “speculation” and no final budgetary decisions had yet been taken.

The Department of Social Protection’s allocation of money is set to be slashed by some €700 million in the budget which aims to cut spending and increase taxes by €3.8 billion in total.

Ms Burton faces an intense backlash from backbench Labour TDs after the idea of a cut in child benefit was floated, despite a clear pledge from leader Eamon Gilmore a few days before the general election that if his party got into Government it would prevent Fine Gael from making such a move.

Some Labour TDs have privately accused the party leadership of attempting to ratchet up concern about child benefit so that it will look like backbenchers have won a victory if it does not appear in the budget statement.

Ms Burton had wanted to tax child benefit to direct resources to less well-off families, but department officials ruled that this would be too complicated to carry out in time for next month’s budget.