No records are kept of the number of pre-Budget submissions received by the Department of Finance but the volume this year has "increased substantially", according to the Department.
This undoubtedly reflects a high level of interest in the Budget along with the valuable public relations and lobbying opportunities which the process gallows the organisations involved.
This is the third year that the Irish Road Hauliers' Association has made a pre-Budget submission. Its president, Mr Gerry McMahon, expresses satisfaction with the response from the Department of Finance. "We definitely feel we have been listened to," he says.
The increase in the number of pre-Budget submissions appears to show how focusing on the outcome of each year's Budget has become an important plank in the campaign strategies of many organisations.
"In the last two or three years, we have started to broaden out our Budget submission to cover areas that aren't strictly speaking budgetary and fiscal policy," says Mr Bernard Harbor, information officer with public sector trade union IMPACT.
Mr Harbor said that, for example, IMPACT included policy suggestions on housing investments and other investments that tied into the budgetary process. This marked a departure from its traditional approach of focusing on the mechanics of the budget and taxation policy.
The union's members urged it to use the Budget as a vehicle for showing policies, he said. "It has become a shop window for a lot of our policies which wouldn't necessarily be strictly related to the Budget announcement on Budget day."
According to a Department of Finance spokeswoman, pre-budget submissions are essential to the preparation of the budget. The process of organising the receipt of pre-Budget submissions and arranging meetings starts many weeks in advance of the Budget and at any one time, the Department has between 1620 staff working on submissions.
Pre-budget submissions are condensed into a list of ideas and their costings, which are worked through with the Minister for Finance and considered.
In terms of making oral submissions, ministers may devote a period of two days to meet with 20 of the bigger organisations for half an hour each. These organisations will have sent in a pre-budget document, so the Minister and his officials will have a reasonable idea of what they're asking for.
Smaller organisations, such as voluntary groups, may get less time. This year a group of 28 organisations representing the voluntary sector were each given six minutes to make their preBudget case to the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Ahern, and department officials on October 23rd.
But at least one observer considers the whole pre-budget submission process to be a flawed one. Mr Donal Toolin, national co-ordinator for the Forum for People with Disabilities, which also made a submission, says he believes the process is less effective for some organisations than it might appear. Mr Toolin claimed there was something uncivilised about the process whereby people argued to the Department that the sectors they represented were more needy than others.
"It's a ritual that is there because it is there. There must be more dutiful ways that people could be engaged in ongoing consultation," he said.
He also contended that it was likely the major budget decisions would have been made before many of the pre-Budget submissions were heard. Dr Tim Collins, director of public affairs at Drury Communications and a former government adviser, says that for all organisations, whether they are large or small, the key to achieving as much as possible with a pre-Budget submission depends on how they present their case.
"They will put a good quality statement together which essentially sets out what they want to achieve and try to position it in terms of the country's interest and the interests of the government rather than the interests of that particular group," said Dr Collins.
"The most successful pre-Budget submissions are the ones that actually couch what they're looking for in terms of how it will impact on a broader front and how it will actually improve government policy."
There is also the issue of how the costings given in submissions are calculated. It is expected that, where possible, submissions should be costed in some way. However, the spokeswoman for the Department of Finance said that sometimes they were unrealistic.
"In any lobbying effort, you need to get good quality advice whether it's legal, financial or economic to make sure your figures stand up, " said Dr Collins. "If you send in a group of figures to the Department of Finance that quite plainly don't add up then you undermine your case immediately."
