Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is before the time of a lot of people but when a project of this nature is being embarked upon, I would have thought that a very simple thing to do would be to amass whatever knowledge was there already. I am making the point that three more reports are being commissioned and paid for. I do not know how much they will cost but I assume that Ms Conroy will be in a position to tell us how much they will cost unless it is another open-ended process where the costs will be revised as it goes along. If Ms Conroy cannot tell me what they will cost, how are we to believe that we will get value for money from any of this because reports that were commissioned will not now be referenced? They are consigned so more reports will be commissioned. Sometimes it sounds like the commissioning of a report is an easy answer when the Department does not want to answer a question. Three more reports are going to be added to the other reports and there has clearly been no learning from the other reports so how much will these new reports cost? How can we have any confidence that anything that comes out of them will be implemented or even remembered in a couple of years' time? Is there a maximum cost set for these reports? There has been no maximum cost for any other area so I would not be surprised if there was not. When will we hear from them? I know that one is due in March. How will they be implemented? To whom will the reports be delivered to ensure that they will be implemented? That goes back to the question of governance, namely, where does the buck stop in controlling the spending at this stage?