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

I have a very brief supplementary question. I understand the demarcation lines but there is a certain sort of lack of "joined-up-ness" here. I will give an example from agriculture where we allocate a certain amount of direct funding to a particular programme while simultaneously there are tax expenditures that are trying to achieve certain things in agriculture but they are not looked at in the round or in terms of the agricultural sector as a whole because they are both trying to achieve things with public money in a particular sector but in two different ways. We have always tended to look at this stuff more and now we are looking at it in even more detail and with more analysis. We are starting to look at this other area but we are not as far down the road and have not joined the two arms yet. I take the point about the Department of Finance. This needs to be said to it as well. It seems there is a logic in seeing how all-of-government efforts and funding, whether it is through tax expenditure or direct expenditure, should be looked at in the round to see if we achieved what we were trying to achieve.