Mr. John Kinnane:

Let us take a step back and look at how performance budgeting started initially. Performance information would have been published in the revised Estimates volume, REV. Before the change in the European timetable for the budget, the REV would have been published around March-April each year. The output data would have been published alongside the targets for the current year. With the performance budgeting initiative, initially there were many key performance metrics that Departments had set that were qualitative, that described certain processes rather than setting out the key metrics that one can measure in terms of numbers. There was a detailed job of work done in 2016, and my colleague Ms Caroline O'Loughlin could speak on some of the changes that came about to try to refine the metrics that we use both in the revised Estimates volume and in the performance report.