Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Today I will also attend a meeting of the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality to discuss the mid-year Estimates, where we will go through the same process. We have used the committee system to introduce better performance measurement and management tools in order to ensure there is more transparency around how Departments perform. Their performance can be tested in committee. This committee's secretariat has done a good job by putting a paper together which contains constructive criticism. It deals with the Department's measurements and its internal processes, but claims that the generalised statements do not give committees enough details to get stuck into in terms of compiling questions. I accept that claim to a certain extent. It is important that we respond to some of the criticisms. People now apply the New Zealand model to what happens in Ireland. People want to know why we cannot do things like New Zealand. There are a lot of good things in the New Zealand model, but that country faces different challenges from Ireland. For example, half of the expenditure that comes through my Department is EU money, and there is a whole series of requirements to go along with that funding, such as inspections and audit systems. Ireland is assessed regularly throughout the year, in a very detailed way, by the European Commission. It ensures that our systems are robust, analyses how we spend the money and assesses whether we get value for money. If we fail in any of those measurements we get significant disallowances. New Zealand faces none of that because it does not have a Common Agricultural Policy.

A big part of our performance indicators are audited by the European Commission, which spends well over €1 billion through my Department each year. There are very tight control and monitoring systems that we are obliged, through the legal regulations of CAP, to deliver on, and we cannot just ignore all of that. When we talk about a wish to deliver control and inspection programmes to underpin the protection of funds and their timely delivery, the committee secretariat says that is an example of our supplying information that is vague or is not definitive in terms of targets. The targets that are set for us have been set down in regulations and they are absolutely definitive. The Department is not perfect but there are a lot of good things happenings, in terms of performance indicators, that we need to apply, particularly with regard to EU moneys that are spent.

There is no other Department - apart perhaps from the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, through its Action Plan for Jobs programme - that is more focused on long-term and medium-term target setting, delivering on these targets in terms of deliverables and recommendations, and measuring them on a monthly, never mind an annual basis, than the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

Every year my Department publishes a report entitled Milestones for Success. Earlier, the Chairman mentioned Origin Green and the sustainability journey. My Department writes a full report every year which, to my knowledge, has never been debated by this committee. That situation is a reflection on us. Perhaps we should have brought it in here. The Milestones for Success reports are published every year; they are in the media every year, and we launch them. A huge amount of work goes into compiling them. It is a fair criticism by the committee that we have not debated those reports here, because they are actual deliverables that we need to get across the line, and those in the industry are involved in that as well.

We have a plan, Food Harvest 2020, that was put together by the last government, to its credit, which contains 215 recommendations that needed to be acted upon and completed. There is now a report that measures our outputs in terms of those recommendations. I do not see the same thing happening in New Zealand. We now have a Food Wise 2025 programme which has 386 recommendations. I chair a monthly meeting with all of the stakeholders, which included, in the past, an implementation group for Food Harvest and now includes the same for Food Wise. We had a meeting this morning where we went through the recommendations and identified who was responsible for all of them. Four key agencies are responsible: BIM, Bord Bia, Teagasc and Enterprise Ireland. As chairman of the stakeholders' group, I point the figure and say to people, "Who takes responsibility for X, Y and Z?". I ask when will they be delivered on and say, "Let us assess as we go along." To be fair, this committee should be involved in some of those discussions a little bit more than heretofore. I accept the criticism, if it is one, that we have not been more open about setting targets. There are 23 items in an Action Plan for Jobs that we need to finalise. I can assure the committee that the Taoiseach will point his finger at me if we do not get those things done.

I accept that we can improve. I accept that we need lean management systems across all Departments which insist on continuous improvement and allow committees such as this one to benchmark performance, under whatever performance indicators we agree on, so that we can show we are improving year on year. If we do not improve then the committee must ask us hard questions that we must answer.

The suggestion that we have tried to avoid setting targets and deliverables is an unfair criticism. It may be a fair criticism to claim that we have not introduced targets and deliverables to the discussions that we are having with the committee. I am anxious to work with the committee on this matter. If we can improve how the Department measures its output, I am confident that we will score pretty well. The New Zealand model is relevant and there are elements of it that we should do more of here. We have also done other things very well, and we should not pretend that has not happened. That is the only comment I want to make on the matter. I am open to making the Secretary General and anyone else in my Department available to the committee and its secretariat so that we can all work together to improve things for next year.