Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the officials from the Department for a very good and interesting report. There is an awful lot of detail to look at but it is very helpful. It is a big reform to now have a document like this containing this much detail and telling us whether the allocation of money made in a budget has achieved what was set out as the rationale for that allocation. This is a lot more information than we used to have before these reports were introduced. They are also improving all of the time. Well done to the officials.

There is so much in the report. It is kind of for each sectoral committee to study the section relevant to it and to then follow-up. However, there are a few things that strike me. The first relates to the Department of Transport. Is there a problem with the Department of Transport? There is absolutely no information on many of its key high-level metrics for 2019, 2020 and 2021. There are no figures on the number of rail stations with accessible bridge crossings, the number of stations with improved accessibility, the number of bus stations with Part M of the building regulations internal and external accessibility improvements, the number of bus stops, the number of wheelchair-accessible vehicles in the taxi fleet and so on. It is not just that there are no figures for this year, but that there are none for the last three years. We therefore do not really know whether the Department of Transport is spending money on the things it was supposed to spend it on and delivering the results it was supposed to deliver. That seems like a big issue. It is the only one I can see that is like that.