Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to appear before it this morning. I can confirm that my Department welcomes the guidelines. With my colleagues, I have had an opportunity to consider the guidelines of which we are aware, the so-called New Zealand guidelines. They are welcome in terms of having a baseline for setting output based performance targets. I know it is the committee's view that should be so. My officials and I, as Minister, are committed to working with both Oireachtas support staff and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to strengthen the performance indicators that are currently in use. That can only be a good thing. We agree that outputs, in general, should cover all significant services and proposed expenditure, that outputs should relate to the goods and services provided to third parties for which the entity is accountable, that clear specific targets should be set and that output performance measures should not relate to internal processes and events. Obviously, we all need to understand the distinction that requires to be drawn between internal processes and events on the one hand and actual outputs on the other. Finally, performance measures and targets should be supported by current and historical levels of performance where that is possible and where they are available.

Notwithstanding those general remarks, we have some concerns that moving to a system of performance outputs that focuses on goods and services provided to third parties would not be appropriate in every instance. It can be challenging to identify appropriate and timely measurement indicators for policy areas. My Department is largely a policy Department and we have a very broad remit across the communications, broadcasting, energy and natural resource sectors. That being the case a variety of different metrics is called for. For example, and we can discuss this if we have an opportunity, perhaps the most striking example, but not the only one, is the national broadband plan. The broadband plan takes several years to put together and the metrics for the design stages of a project can be very different from appropriate measures to be applied when the project is at full roll-out stage. There is the developmental phase, planning and so on. The type of measurements that are appropriate to apply to what we are doing at the moment are somewhat different from the measurements that it would be necessary to apply when the job is done, that is, do people have high quality broadband and is it working.

My Department has commenced a review of performance indicators. We are committed to bringing forward proposals for discussion with the Oireachtas, the committee and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in regard to the performance measures that it would be appropriate to include in the 2016 Estimates. Those are my general comments on the outputs and the performance targets approach the committee wishes to take and I support the committee in that regard.

No reallocation of funds has taken place to date within the Vote in 2015, but we are considering reallocations in one or two areas. For example, the Department is considering reallocating €2.5 million capital from savings in subhead A3, ICT programmes, to subhead C4, the sustainable energy programmes, which are cash limited.