Mr. Graham Doyle:

Perhaps we will deal with those questions in turn. I thank Senator Feighan for his comments. As we look at the rules and practices around governance, it is very much a balancing act across all stakeholders and agencies, and most important, whoever is the client ultimately, that is, the citizen, the taxpayer and person living in the State. Balancing those is a critical part when look at how what we do at a departmental level influences what our agencies do.

The Senator is right that there is a far greater private sector influence in the public sector as we look, for example, across the renewal programme in the Civil Service. The Senator spoke of people from the private sector coming into government, and he qualified it quickly by acknowledging the work of civil servants. I came from the private sector. I am a chartered accountant by profession. I came into the Department at assistant secretary level about five years ago and then took over the Secretary General role. We see some of those influences happening. It is interesting to come into it from outside the system as someone who had a long career in the private sector and to see how thinking is changing regularly. I worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers for a long time. I was on secondment to the Department, which was a forerunner to this Department, back in 2004-2005. It is very interesting to come back and see the changes that have taken place over the period since then.

The Senator asked about other external influences in how we deal with governance, managing agencies and so on. One significant change we have made in the past 12 months is that we have come to a memorandum of understanding, or terms of reference, with NewERA. As part of our work in the governance space we asked if it would form a stronger relationship with us, and that has been very beneficial. The people there have brought their expertise to bear, especially their financial expertise. There is a NewERA member seconded to the Department who is available to the divisions in the Department to deal with routine issues in the first instance, and there is much wider expertise for that individual back at NewERA headquarters. We have also volunteered, as opposed to it being mandated under legislation, which I believe it is in other cases, to have commentary from NewERA on some of our larger agencies as part of its annual report.

That was something which we felt it would be useful to sign up to, even though it was not mandated. That is again part of our overall focus. Senator Feighan asked about international influence. The main principles of the written governance framework were developed by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. A number of other Departments were part of a group looking at how that would be brought about. On international comparisons, from memory - and I may be wrong on this - I believe there was some comparison with New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and certain other countries. Many of the principles actually come from the OECD governance principles for the public sector. That was one area which was drawn upon.

The Senator also talked about the focus on outcomes. Again, that is something we have tried to bring about as an ethos within the Department. We have two-yearly sessions with the division of the Department under each assistant secretary. All management board members take part in those to try to bring an overall focus and, because we have such a broad remit, learning and questioning from other parts of the Department to try to balance things out as sometimes a person in a particular area might not be able to see the wood for the trees. Since the organisation capability review we are now also engaging in a lot of cross-departmental work, particular in respect of policy forums and sessions wherein particular policy matters can be teased out. I believe that covers those issues.

On our work plan for this year Deputy Munster referenced the budget and the extent of additional funding under it. In recent years it has been difficult for Departments to find additional current funding. That has been a challenge for our Department. We have been very successful in arguing for much more significant levels of capital funding. We are one of the biggest beneficiaries of funding under the national development plan. The work plan which the Deputy mentioned is very much about rolling out that national development plan through our agencies over the coming years and about working with them and ensuring that the Department has oversight and can engage in guidance and risk management around the roll-out of that plan.

On the work that we have done, when I took over the position of Secretary General we had reached a low point in terms of the numbers of staff available to us in certain areas post-recession. We had lost many very experienced staff. In order to be able to be faithful to our work programme and to roll it out we had to engage in a rebuilding exercise. The resources that have been provided allow us to do that. We have had the scope to do that.

On the freedom of information issues, I am very sorry to hear if there has been a particular difficulty in a particular case or two. I apologise if that has come about. I do not know the specifics, but I would be happy to talk to the Deputy separately in that regard if that would be helpful. The number of freedom of information requests has risen significantly in recent years. Looking back at 2014, just under 100 freedom of information requests were received. In 2018 it was closer to 350. That number is growing very substantially as part of the work within the Department. We try our very best to deal with freedom of information requests. I am sorry if the Deputy has had a particularly difficult experience. If it reached that level of seriousness there is the potential for complaints to go to the Information Commissioner, but I do not think we have had an instance of that or of any serious issues arising around it. Would Ms Stapleton like to say anything on freedom of information before I finish with it?