Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is a pleasure for me, the Minister of State, Deputy English, and the officials to be with the committee this afternoon. As you said, Chairman, I will speak about the performance information first. The committee is considering the performance information that is included in the Revised Estimates volume for education and how that information might be improved to better assist the committee in performing its financial oversight role. This relates to the various output targets that are listed for each of the four high-level programme goals for my Department, together with various indicators of performance.

My officials have over the past few months been working closely with staff of the Oireachtas service and staff of the committee in this area, with a view to improving the type of output and target information that is presented in the Estimates. Some progress has already been made. That is to be welcomed and it will, hopefully, be reflected in the targets to be included in the Estimate for 2016.

My Department does agree that the guidance on setting performance targets, issued by the New Zealand Auditor General, can assist the efforts to improve the performance-based information included with the Estimates for the Department. We are happy to continue to work with the committee in this regard. We consider that this engagement would also include the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, which publishes the Revised Estimates volume, and whose input would also be very important in this context. It was that Department which facilitated the introduction a few years ago of the new performance budgeting approach to the production of departmental Estimates. Performance budgeting essentially introduced the concept of including performance-related information directly into Departments' Estimates, whereas before this performance information existed separately to the Estimate.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is, I understand, also currently considering how the format of the 2016 Estimates might be improved. My Department also believes that some of the other benchmark and guidance material that informed the introduction of performance budgeting, including material from the European Union and OECD, should also inform this new process.

I am confident that co-operation in this area between line Departments, the Oireachtas service and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform will over time lead to improvements in the targets and outputs presented with the Estimates. There will be issues and challenges to address here, but I believe that they can be resolved through the adoption of a reasonable and pragmatic approach on all parts. Some of the issues have already been encountered in the engagements of the past few months and some are alluded to in the briefing material produced for committee members today. They include such issues as: deciding whether certain output material in the Estimate should continue to be included, even though it might not meet all of the criteria set out in the New Zealand guidance. This would relate, for example, to important structural changes made in Departments to allow them to better deliver their services, but which might be regarded under the New Zealand guidance as being more in the nature of internal processes. I refer to such matters as the reform in the vocational education committees, VECs, coming together as education and training boards, ETBs, and the reform in the further education and training sector; dealing with situations where information on performance is not available on an annual basis. This would be the case in relation to certain international surveys of education performance, such as the programme for international student assessment, PISA, survey; cases where results will only be achieved over a period of longer than one year, which is a feature of many educational programmes; cases where important education outcomes cannot be attributed to one particular activity or target. This would be the case, for example, in relation to key indicators such as leaving certificate retention rates, or to participation rates in higher education; and how best to capitalise on the reality that Departments, in addition to the Estimates volume, use a wide range of mechanisms for reporting progress on targets and policies.

My Department, for example, has produced significant reporting outputs as part of the integrated reform delivery plan, IRDP, for the education and training sector which is available on my Department’s website and how the Estimates can accommodate the presentation of important context information in relation to education and education expenditure. This would include key metrics such as numbers of mainstream and special needs teachers, numbers of SNAs, and numbers of schools. As I said, however, I am confident that these and other issues arising can be satisfactorily resolved in the current process of engagement.

I again thank the Chairman for allowing me to make these introductory comments about this part of the meeting. The Minister of State, Deputy English, and I are happy to respond to questions.