Mr. William Beausang:

I will respond to those two questions. The only observation I will make on the Deputy's first question is that I have sat with Ministers as they put through very important legislation on Committee Stage and the committees have engaged with Ministers in a very active and dynamic way to make very important changes to legislation. I do not have any direct experience of the engagement around expenditure proposals, having just recently moved into the area, but my experience over a number of years in terms of the legislative process is that there is a very strong willingness to engage on important issues. I had that experience with the legislation dealing with protected disclosures, lobbying and freedom of information reforms, for example, and I do not see why those principles would not carry across to the particular scenario upon which the Deputy based his question.

In terms of the other question that the Deputy said he does not expect me to answer, officials were very involved in engaging with colleagues in the OECD in the development of the proposals that are contained in that report. While it is the OECD's report, the Deputy can take it as given that there was a lot of dialogue, debate and deliberation on it, and many of the recommendations in the report reflect that. That is as far as I would go in response to the Deputy's second question.