Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and I welcome his statement in which he and his Department accept the necessity for improved performance output around documentation and I welcome the willingness to try to improve. If we as a Parliament can work with Departments like the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport we will all benefit in the long run.

Regarding the output measures and the associated targets to be included in the Estimates, in some cases they are not specific enough to be meaningful. The Minister addressed this when he spoke about the airport example. I suggest the implementation of recommended actions in accordance with stated milestones. While that is aspirational, it needs to be contextualised. On the plan to continue work on smarter travel projects, it becomes very difficult to measure what the output ultimately is in that regard. I am not being critical and I do not look for a direct answer other than an engagement that says this is where we need to get to.

The desire to develop the Wild Atlantic Way discovery points is a vision which becomes difficult to measure in terms of the output. It would help if there was a more specific aim, for example, to develop four of the Wild Atlantic Way discovery points over the next 12 months. Or, regarding smarter travel, it would help to identify two or three projects which could be delivered within a time-frame. It may make it easier, for those of us on this side of the table, to hold the Minister and his Department to account on where things fall between the cracks. If we can get this right over a period of time it will serve the country better in the long run because it will mean that all of us are more keenly focused on how money is spent if it does get spent. The Minister will not be left in the difficult situation at the end of the year of having money left over from various projects that he is then in a position to spend on other pet projects in the run-up to an election.