Dr. Mary Murphy:

It draws on our experience. Ireland showed considerable leadership in the mid-1990s.

We were probably one of the first countries to roll out poverty proofing and to try to put in place the institutional mechanisms. Some useful learning is still available to us to draw on. Part of this relates to the role of political leadership. The placement of oversight mechanisms is important in giving enough authority to one Department to persist with other Departments and their engagement in poverty proofing. One of the key international lessons is where the oversight mechanism is placed without the Department and the enabler of the proofing. That is important and we examined the idea of the Departments of the Taoiseach and Public Expenditure and Reform leading. That mirrors the Scottish experience, for example. The oversight mechanisms were located as near as possible to the finance department, which acted as the driver to other departments to know they had to engage with it if they wanted their money. That is an important lesson

Other lessons that emerged from the early experiences of proofing was the degree to which these mechanisms were institutionally embedded as well. The more they are seen to be statutory and not the product of a particular Government but a product of long-term change in political institutions, the better. It is important for them to be embedded. There are related experiences that show they need to be adequately resourced. The type of proofing tools and the type of data available matter. Mistakes are often made when people think they can take one tool and kill all birds with it. That is not the case across the range of equality grounds. Some grounds simply do not lend themselves to such proofing, perhaps using SWITCH, because the data are not available. Other types of proofing are, therefore, required such as case study approaches or deeper consultation-led proofing approaches. There is a rich range of lessons to learn. Our starting point in thinking about that would be, as Mr. Bond said, for the committee to get the balance right between tactically trying to keep the issue on the agenda in the short term and demonstrating outcomes from proofing exercises in the short term, which is a necessary aspect of trying to make sure it happens, and then strategically giving the time and space to get it right in the longer term in order that it becomes embedded. It is about trying to get the balance right between doing something but not doing so much so quickly that people's support for it is lost. We have had to think a little about this because our impulse is to jump in and say, "Let us do this. There is so much that could be done it would be wonderful".

Deputy Naughton asked what short-term tactical measures could be taken in the budget that would lay the ground for opening up the wider range of deeper, strategic changes that could be embedded over a range of budgets. We have been thinking about that and we have very much asked questions of our assembled experts to give us guidance on Friday such as what is practical now and what would one best spend one's time and money on in this budget in such a way as to ensure that the right doors are being opened up and the right ground work is being laid for subsequent budgets.

With regard to how the commission could engage in this budget, there will be a need to seek the engagement of some Departments which are doing a good deal of this work, for example, for the tax strategy groups and their own policy work but then the issue is how that work is utilised and drawn into the wider budgetary process, including the parliamentary process and the wider public process that goes with that. We have set aside resources in acknowledgment that the commission may have a specific role here and there in the short term in trying to advance a particular model of how something could be done or comparing and contrasting two different models to see if they generate better options. Of the human rights family of proofing options that Ms Logan referred to, we are conscious that we have the least experience in Ireland of that range of options but they have been used to good effect in other jurisdictions, which have creative and concrete tools that could be experimented with or piloted in the short term but there is no Irish context to draw on there.

There is good experience in Ireland of the equality and gender mainstreaming options. In particular, the Department of Justice and Equality led with the equality mainstreaming unit. Much of that has been well evaluated. The learning is still there and the skills are still available and the Equality Authority had that direct experience in-house and could more quickly activate that part of it.

The actors involved in rolling out the poverty impact assessment are still in the system and those kinds of lessons are available to us.

We are also conscious that the committee wanted to engage in regional and rural proofing. To some degree the previous poverty-proofing mechanisms engaged in rural questions. We are also aware that, for example, international human rights instruments, such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, also bring that regional and rural dimension very specifically into their mechanisms for policy proofing.

We believe the range is rich enough and it is not necessary to invent something. What complex blend of them would work best in our institutional settings at this time is a matter of short-term and longer-term experimentation. How we lay out a path to do that is of tactical and strategic importance. We would be very willing to tease that out more and that is what we are equipping ourselves to do on Friday. We are very aware that this is a significant opportunity but the bigger aim is to try to achieve it in a way that it becomes institutionally embedded and would last across governments.