Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Department is carrying out these reviews anyway and doing the report on the sustainable development goals. Sadly, they are never discussed in any public forum unless there is something controversial in them. A lot of time and effort goes into them and, respectfully, I suggest that the Department look at what could logically be incorporated into its presentation to the committee under the topic of the Department's performance. That may require engagement with the committee and we may need to change the terms of reference and the invite to the Department. The intention is not to try to reinvent the wheel, it is to try to elicit the data that will make this engagement far more constructive next year than it has been historically and, I hope, this will set the benchmark for other Departments and committees. In fairness, we would all accept that in terms of engagement with the public and public representatives, the Department does and has historically set the benchmark. Whenever we are at meetings with local authorities or other Government Departments, people always ask why do they not take a leaf out of the Department of Social Protection's book concerning engagement. We would like to be in the same situation for performance reporting to this committee by the Department. I will leave that as a final thought. We are available to engage further with the witnesses in a less formal mechanism if they feel it would be of assistance in drilling down exactly where we want to go. We are all on the one side of the page in this regard. I thank the witnesses for their time this morning.

That concludes the committee's business in public session today. I propose that the committee go into private session to consider other business. Is that agreed? Agreed.