Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I accept that we can do better in certain areas. On foot of this meeting, we will pull out areas where we feel we could present a better picture to members of this committee. The vast bulk of our budget is used to support enterprises in their expansion plans. It will probably be tricky to turn that into outputs. There are activities, but the outputs probably take a number of years to develop. We have published a full suite of evaluations of almost all our programmes. They have been published on our website in the past 12 months. They give an idea of the ex postimpact of some of these programmes. The metrics are good on those. Obviously, take-up might be slow in difficult years.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has expressed no concern about our metrics. I think we are doing okay in that sphere. We have developed service level agreements with our agencies. I would say we are as good as, if not better than, most Departments in developing those sorts of agreements. A service level agreement is entered into with the agencies from shortly after the budget is nailed down. This ensures people know what is expected.

We encounter the same problems as the Deputy in deciding what constitutes the output or the activity of an agency. I suppose the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has been inclined to keep the same number of metrics and the same detail so that people can track it over time. I do not think the Deputy's suggestion would pose a huge difficulty, subject to the constraints of publication in the Estimates volume. We can certainly provide some data separately to the committee. I think the point is that they want everything on one page. It is a question of the limitations associated with the way they publish these documents. We would have no problem with developing the statistics requested by the Deputy and providing them under a separate cover or otherwise.

The Deputy also asked about the 2016 budget.

We have had a very good year. Enterprise take-up of our programmes has been much more rapid than in the past. That is a healthy sign of the state of the economy. We have reached a stage at which we are no longer looking for cuts to our current expenditure, so there is now stability in our current expenditure. That is important. The agencies had been under continuous restriction in terms of size and activities, as had our offices and Departments. That has given a stability to our planning for 2016. Over the last couple of years, outside of our employment control framework, we have been able to put boots on the ground, particularly in overseas markets. That is something we did secure in the past and we will hold on to that. Those activities are being rolled out. I do not think the recruitment is entirely finished on all those positions.

Our activity levels were very high last year. The net job figures were over 7,000 for IDA, 8,500 for EI and 4,000 for the LEOs. These very high activity levels represent a very good year. We will be seeking to maintain these levels, which would support very strong growth in overall employment. Looking to the next year, the committee well knows that the regional development plans are the new area of activity we are working on. We have put out competitive calls and will be funding the best of those. We will also continue to roll out investment in property-based solutions under the IDA programme. Those are the issues for the future. In the environment we now face, we will always have to be innovative in the way we use our money. That will be a continuing theme. We are always looking for more leverage from the private sector with anything we spend in a period of recovery.