Mr. John Kinnane:

The performance budgeting initiative was to move away from the revised Estimates volume, REV. The revised Estimates volume would have provided a significant level of detail, down to the micro level of the subheads in terms of financial inputs and it would not have supported a discussion as to how public services are being delivered with those funds. They certainly provided a detailed overview of the financial resources but did not try to link those financial resources with outputs. The performance budgeting initiative is a tool that when one looks at the REV, the high level goals are linked into the Department's statement of strategy and the programmes selected by Departments should also be linked into those statements of strategy. The Departments themselves select the metrics. The role of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is to try to ensure that the metrics are measurable. The review that was carried out in 2016 was focused on ensuring that the information being presented was measurable, so that as Deputy Broughan pointed out that over time one can develop a time series, so one can see what direction the various outputs are going. With qualitative indicators one cannot.