Mr. Ronnie Downes:

A couple of points arise, one of which concerns the schedule for the national well-being framework.

As Mr. Kinnane said, the intention is to have the framework delivered by the summer. It could serve many very useful purposes. As Deputy Mairéad Farrell mentioned earlier, the ambition of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is to have an overarching framework which can be an anchor around which we can build many of our processes and a common frame of reference for what we do both in how we design policy and how we account for the achievements and accomplishments of policy. Having that in place by the summer is just the first step in setting the parameters for that framework. How we use it and embed it within our policy processes and our accountability processes into the future will be an ongoing process.

The Chairman asked whether there should be or could be an impact for processes and the budgetary cycle. That will be worked through, including in the context of the implementation of the various recommendations from this committee's report. We have an annual cycle which at least in principle should lend itself to segmenting different parts of the year for different areas of focus or perhaps in parallel for different things to be brought forward. I believe one of the recommendations of the report was that once the Estimates are presented to the Dáil in December, to try to have the various Dáil committees conduct their analysis of the Estimates by the end of January. That could allow space for more detailed engagement with the sectoral committees and the line Departments during the spring.

There are some recommendations in the committee's report about pre-budget engagement. While I do not think that equality budgeting or green budgeting in themselves would be drivers of a changed budgetary cycle, they could facilitate useful discussions at different stages of the budgetary cycle as it evolves.