The President of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland, Mr Pat Montague, has called for an end to what he describes as "the unhealthy secrecy surrounding the annual Budget process".
Mr Montague said that given that the Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen TD, is now hiring consultants to review the wide range of tax shelters in advance of next year's Budget, he should also use the review process to examine the procedures through which the Budget itself is formed.
In particular Mr Montague says all groups making pre-budget submissions should have to account for their proposals and demonstrate publicly how they would serve the wider national and community interest.
"It's worth reflecting on the fact that there is no meaningful role for the public or our representatives in the Oireachtas in the budget process," said Mr Montague.
Key decisions, such as the allocation of departmental estimates, are hammered out behind closed doors. Each year the Budget and the spending estimates are delivered as a fait accompli and the key political choices made during the process rarely get a public airing. It is a system that must be changed."
Mr Montague proposes that Government should be required to publish a mid-year economic assessment that would outline the parameters of the budgetary debate.
Draft estimates for each Department should be presented to the relevant Dáil Committee for debate and the priorities of each Department should be publicly aired at Committee level. This would enable the Dáil to make changes to the estimates before they are finalised.
"Those seeking either more expenditure or tax breaks are not being asked to publicly account for their proposals and to explain how they are in the wider interests of the community as a whole," said Mr Montague.
"In fact the opposite has happened here in Ireland with a whole culture of secrecy surrounding the budgetary process. This secrecy is typified by the tradition that has developed - copied from the British - whereby the Minister enters a period of purdahin terms of any substantive comment on budgetary matters, from the return of the Dáil after the summer recess until the publication of the departmental estimates a little while before his actual Budget speech."