Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is a mixture. I am clear within my own Department what my priorities are. When I came into office those objectives were published. I meet every month with the management boards of the Department and we review where we are with the priorities that we have set. That is partly by virtue of necessity because there are so many different things going on within my Department that I have to be very clear on what the particular matters are that I believe are important to the country and that I want to make happen. I have a list against which I evaluate where we stand on different matters but other things happen that take up one's time and energy and can sometimes get in the way of priorities. For me, that is more of an argument as to why clear priorities are needed in the first place. One can always be taken off course by events.

On the Deputy's question on how we evaluate things - it depends on the policy area. I will give the example of sport. The Deputy is correct about how we evaluate the output in sport. One of the outputs that we track is the number of medals that national athletes win. We look at that every year. That tracking is done by the Irish Sports Council. We also track levels of participation in sport. Much of the work that the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar has underway on Healthy Ireland will allow us to get outputs and look at the number of people by age group who participate in sport. This has led to one insight for me that I feel strongly about, which is how we drive sporting participation, particularly among more disadvantaged communities. That is something that has only emerged from looking at the outputs from sport. Outputs will vary and will depend on what part of the Department we look at.

If we look at new roads projects, it is as simple as asking if the project is funded. Where does it stand in the planning process? Has work begun on it? When will the project open? If we look at maintenance, I would track that through the amount of funding that we make available to local authorities to help them replenish and sustain roads that are already there. That is how we would look at that.

I have already touched on the question of tourism. Another area of transport is sustainable and smarter travel. We track the number of people using public transport and the numbers and trends. For example, we track how many people use Leap cards. These are all very carefully looked at by me and my officials who work in the area.