In view of the Mangan report on child benefit and discussions at Cabinet yesterday on a further cut to child benefit, which would be contrary to Labour Party policy, is it intended to introduce a supplementary budget in this term to give effect to the recommendations of the report? What is the budgetary procedure this year? It has been suggested that the budget may be introduced earlier this year, rather than at Christmas.

No, it is not intended to have any supplementary budget this session. Deputy Hannigan raised this earlier. The report is now published; it will go to the Oireachtas committee. The advisory group made recommendations about the importance of a universal payment, but it examined issues of taxation of child benefit and a two-tier system. The report will come back to the House for discussion and the Government will consider it in due course.

The second part of my question was on this year's budgetary process. Last year, it was announced that there were plans to bring the budget forward from December to October. I do not know whether that is-----

This all depends upon European decisions in regard to the semester, as it is called. It may be, as I said earlier on, that the budget for 2014 might be presented a little earlier, but I cannot confirm that yet. In any event, we have enough challenges with implementing budget 2013 before we get to considering budget 2014.

We want the 2014 procedure to follow on from 2013.