Ms Caroline O'Loughlin:

We try to increase our work on equality budgeting every year. We have mentioned requests for data and the need for data. We are trying to provide as much of an evidence base as possible so that, when budget negotiations are going on, the Departments and the political participants have all of the evidence they need to inform their decisions. We try to increase this year on year. I have spoken to the Deputy before in meetings of other Oireachtas committees about the public service performance report and the data it captures. As I have mentioned, we try to format it as a key tool for dialogue between committees and the Departments with regard to what is captured within it. More use could be made of that information.

As I said earlier, we take feedback from those conversations that happen. If an Oireachtas committee makes it known that it wants a given thing to be captured, we will make sure it gets captured in the next edition of the performance report. The Oireachtas committees have a key role in informing what gets included in this report.

I encourage as much use of this report as possible. As a unit, we try to increase this year on year. I do not want to go over it again but an awful lot of work has been done. We have spoken to the Deputy about this before. I refer to the data audit, the data strategy and expanding the programme to other dimensions of equality. We are trying to address that as best we can and to make sure it increases year on year and that the momentum equality budgeting has had thus far is maintained through increasing the availability of information.