Budget should be an open book

Eoghan Murphy says Budget Day should be the most boring day in the year, writes political editor Paul O’Brien.

EOGHAN Murphy wants Budget Day to be a non-event.

“Budget Day should be the most boring day in the year,” the Fine Gael TD for Dublin South East says. He envisages a process where there would be “no surprises” on the day. Instead, all possible policy options would have been debated in full and in public by an Oireachtas committee for months beforehand.

The Cabinet would still have final say but, crucially, the decisions announced would not come out of the blue. This could serve a dual purpose, Mr Murphy says. It could see an end to the hasty U-turns. It could also prevent people being scared for months on end.

“It’s no good scaring the shit out of people for a month about a cut they think is coming only to reverse it, or scaring them for six months about potential cuts they don’t even know may or may not be coming down the line. Who does that serve?”

The same problem exists for businesses, he says, which, just like households, need certainty to plan ahead. The flipside, some politicians would argue, is that by flagging potential cuts months in advance, it allows lobby groups time to fight them. He acknowledges that possibility, but says under the model he envisages, TDs would be fully briefed and could “then stand up to that debate” and defend the Government properly.

There are other ways in which the public debate could be enhanced. After examining a British proposal to give taxpayers a detailed annual breakdown of how their taxes are spent, he has called for the introduction of a similar system here and prepared legislation on the issue. The Coalition says it is already changing the model in line with commitments in the Programme for Government. These changes include publishing three-year expenditure allocations for every department and broadly outlining what will — and won’t — be on the table in terms of spending cuts and tax hikes.

The background papers from last year’s comprehensive review of expenditure were all published, and the Government says it’s open to any TD to examine such documentation and make recommendations.

But Mr Murphy says publishing documents is insufficient. In his view, everything should be on the table and debated in full. This includes the Croke Park Agreement, with which many Fine Gael TDs have an issue. But it also includes income tax, even if he personally feels there isn’t scope to increase it.

In terms of lack of debate, he expresses particular disappointment that the recommendations of the Fiscal Advisory Council — the independent body set up to advise on budgetary policy — are being ignored. The council’s most recent advice could, in a nutshell, be summed up as cut more, cut quicker in order to get the deficit under control. “Closing the deficit is the most important thing, it’s a national security issue as far as I’m concerned,” says Mr Murphy.

“As long as the deficit remains in place to the extent that it is, we are too exposed to external events. So for our own independence, for what it’s worth — our own ability to control our own affairs and destiny — we need to bring that back in line.”

If that means abandoning commitments made by the coalition parties, so be it. The Programme for Government, he says, was based on economic forecasts such as growth rates which have proved inaccurate and thus are no longer valid. “I have found it frustrating because not only are we ignoring the independent body that we set up to advise us, we’re not even discussing the issues around it. There’s no debate there, because there’s no appetite for debate and there’s no forum for debate. And that’s a real problem, particularly I think for newer TDs, who just won’t accept the status quo. And the problem there is that when you don’t give people room to discuss things, it’s just going to bubble underneath the surface, until one day...”

It explodes?

“Yeah.”

In this regard, he risks being viewed as a troublemaker, saying things with which the Government is uncomfortable. In recent weeks, the label “five-a-side club” has been applied to Mr Murphy and a group of the first-term Fine Gael TDs which, the story goes, met under the cover of a game of soccer to discuss their concerns with Government direction. “I hate that name, but there is no group, as such. It was something that was a bit of a joke initially that took on a bit of a life of its own, but what it refers to really is the new TDs who are maybe younger, who have come in with, I suppose, no preconceptions and no history of doing things a certain way, and they’re more than prepared to challenge the status quo — everything from the standing orders [Dáil rules] and how we do our business to the decisions we make.

“And I think that’s really healthy, that’s what people wanted, that’s what they voted for. And I think that the Government should at the very least not try to stifle that.

“A big criticism I always have of previous TDs — and it’s one I don’t want ever levelled against me — is that they just stood there and let decisions be made and voted for them, without really scrutinising them, having robust debate over them. None of us have all the answers ourselves... It’s only through debate and engagement that we come to something better than each of us brought to the table. And that’s what politics is about.”