Ms Caroline O'Loughlin:

Yes, absolutely. The approach we have always taken with equality budgeting is that it would be embedded into the already existing performance budgeting framework. Performance budgeting shows us exactly what resources each Department has been allocated and what they have done with those resources. Over the past number of years, we have focused not on outputs but on outcomes and impacts, and not only what have they spent the money on but how has that improved society or changed people's lives. As I said, that is what we want equality budgeting to do. It is to sharpen the focus of policy Departments, when policy is being written, on how the impact on certain cohorts of society will be maximised.

We can certainly see, especially over the past number of years, in the performance budgeting framework as a whole that the metrics are much more targeted and we can see the evidence of the impact of public expenditure on society and people's lives. Ultimately, that provides evidence-based information that will inform future allocations. We certainly can see the improvement over the past number of years into the whole budgetary cycle.