Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Coveney may not be around for the debate but hopefully he will engage in the consultation that it seems we are going to undertake. I have questions on the consultation that I will come back to.

One of the debates that frequently pops up here is around a constitutional amendment to allow young people to vote at the age of 16. It is a very sensible idea. However, the point was made that this is about children even younger than 16 or those who are perhaps not even born yet. It is a very welcome thing to extend our timelines, our thinking and the way we view the consequences of our actions and the work that needs to be done. I agree with the idea of being focused on missions, outcomes and the role the body plays. One of the things I would like to, and could be interesting to, explore, are the reporting levels. Deputy Ó Cathasaigh spoke about reporting after 12 months. I look at the Policing Authority which has quarterly engagements with An Garda Síochána where there is a robust exchange, an interrogation, a detailed exchange of numbers, data and questions to really drill into things. That is a really important thing. It could be a really positive thing. On the idea of being more outcome-focused, I will pick up on the point made by the Department of the Taoiseach about the tagging initiative that uses dimensions of the well-being framework. Is that done as a kind of post hoc analysis of the budget or does it in any way influence the budget? As was said before, it is about setting an outcome. There is a big difference between setting an outcome and trying to achieve it and delivering a budget through the normal framework, applying it after the fact saying how good we are for ticking particular boxes. They are very different ways of thinking about the process and they produce different outcomes and consequences. Asking if this is a post hoc analysis; the tagging exercise and how it can be expanded and how it interacts with this kind of work, I would love to hear a bit more about that. I am conscious of allowing time for answers so I will leave it there for the moment. I may jump in towards the end with another question.