Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I note the guidance is from the Auditor General of New Zealand. The secretariat asked what the breakdown of the output would be. The secretariat also said policy and legislation related targets, for example, the publication of legislation such as the Gender Recognition Bill, are not relevant to performance reporting. On that, the recent enactment of the Gender Recognition Act enables a person to have his or her preferred gender recognised by the State. This is vital legislation for transgender people and their families and represents a significant milestone for equality in Irish society. Progressing this legislation has been fundamental to the work programme of the Department and has a tangible impact on the lives of those who will benefit. In saying this, I am conscious I am sitting across from Deputy Ó Snodaigh who played an important role, as did others here, in identifying this legislation. We all worked hard on it and learned a vast amount about an issue that had never been addressed in Ireland since it became independent. I believe, therefore, the suggestion that the legislative output of Departments is not of significance is a political point that can be overstated.

Social protection is not just about making the 85 million payments a year, to which I referred. It must also be about the development of policies in order to deliver on the Government's targets in regard to poverty, unemployment, employment, equity, income adequacy and social inclusion.

We all know that we are talking about retired people and pensioners, children, families with children and people out of work. All of us here know that we are especially concerned about younger people out of work, older people out of work, inner city and urban areas with unemployment problems. We are also concerned about similar situations in rural areas. The whole tapestry of Irish life is expressed in the Department of Social Protection. It is not the most productive approach to confine our discussions to very narrow issues, for example, processing times, on which we have had many discussions, even if they are very important for the service people receive. I want to hear the views of the committee on welfare policies and financial allocations and where they should be enhanced, amended or reduced.

In regard to reporting on internal processes, we have just undergone the biggest transformation in the history of the State in terms of a Department, adding 3,000 employees from a series of other Departments in order to re-imagine our social welfare service from just a hole in the wall slot machine operation of paying out, once one qualifies, to a much more comprehensive service around getting people back to work. The OECD extensively uses New Zealand-based data and New Zealand experiences for good and bad. We should remember what happened in New Zealand when it dismantled much of its social welfare system some years ago. New Zealand has many good things going for it but there are things I suggest we do not particularly want to copy from it. There is a fundamental change around integrating very different work practices, cultures, IT systems, while ensuring that the day to day work of the Department is maintained at a high level. I hope that the scale of this transformation - the staff, the systems, the culture, the values that are being put in place - are the building blocks to enable us to deliver our enhanced services to people in this country so that as time goes by, the one DSP programme becomes fully imbedded and these targets will no longer feature. However, as of now they are still very important.

The secretariat has suggested to the Department that it considers reporting on the processing times for each scheme in the Revised Estimates, each of the Pathways to Work targets and progress in regard to reaching child poverty targets. There are a number of practical issues. There is limited space in the Revised Estimates process so there is an issue around practicality. Apart from space issues, there are separate established reporting mechanisms which do not have to be duplicated. Pathways to Work updates are available each quarter in full colour on the Department's website. The colour system, which is easy to follow, is the traffic light system. If red it has still to be done, if green it is being done and if orange, we are still working on it. It is a simple system which is on the website in full colour.

Poverty targets are reported in the social inclusion monitor which is published each year. That needs much development. I will not go into it in detail but a huge amount of work remains to be done on capturing the measurements of poverty as a scientific social science. There are also issues in regard to the timeliness of reporting. Reporting on progress in the area of poverty targets is dependent on the publication, as members are aware, of the SILC report, the survey of income and living conditions, which in recent years, to my great disappointment and frustration, has not been available on time for publication in the Revised Estimates. Conversely, the Pathways to Work programme submits reports much more regularly than once a year. I would like to see that being addressed and I understand it may be addressed in the near future.