THE BUDGETARY process was “dysfunctional” and should be replaced by a system of “structured engagement” with the Opposition and the people at large, Fine Gael enterprise spokesman Richard Bruton said last night.
There must be a strategy for full employment and the failed systems in politics, public service, planning and regulation must be replaced by a “smart State”, he told a National Youth Council of Ireland conference in Croke Park on youth unemployment.
He said there was “no opportunity for amendment of proposals for spending made by Government [and] no obligation on the recipients of spending to set out the targets they will deliver with their money”.
The process was reduced to “a single all-or-nothing vote in a moment of high drama on budget day,” Mr Bruton said.
“This system must change this year so that we can have structured engagement involving not only Opposition TDs, but the people at large, whose future is intimately tied up in the decisions that are to be taken,” he said.
