Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his officials, as well as his opening statement and his commitment to presenting the information with the new guidelines. I have a few questions. In discussions the Minister may have had with the Department in the knowledge the new guidelines were to be discussed, did he meet with some resistance within the Department? While I accept the Minister's commitment to it, that may not be so forthcoming from certain parts of the Department and I seek to ascertain whether there was resistance in this regard. Second, I accept the point that some Departments lend themselves well to this type of measurement involving inputs, outputs, impacts and so on. The Minister noted that the communications portfolio, for example, is very much a policy-driven Department. However, there are subheads or areas within the departmental Estimate that lend themselves well to inputs, outputs and impacts. I suggest, one of these is under subhead A3, which deals with the national broadband scheme, MANS networks, schools networks and postcodes. These are programme-driven or project-driven initiatives within the Department. The real issue members of the committee have is when they consider the items covered in this review, they look at figures adding up to thousands - under this subhead adding up to just short of €18 million - in a single snapshot that effectively tells them nothing. The figures tell members what is being spent in a six-month period in the first half of the year, what is the projection for the remainder of the year and that is it. Were the Department serious or were it attempting to consider how the guidelines could have been displayed to the committee, even today, I suggest it would have been possible to have that type of output measurement in a basic sense on subhead A3, which lends itself well to the new guidelines.