Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Department for the report. I know a great deal of work goes into producing this report that allows us to be in a position to scrutinise the various budgetary commitments from a monetary perspective and the different avenues by which the issues are addressed. I have not gone through the report in enough detail to be able to question it in depth, but I am sure I will get an opportunity in the coming weeks to address it.

I am not so sure that the title is necessarily appropriate. My understanding of a performance report would be where I might be in a position to measure the output, which the Department officials call the performance against policy commitments made by Government in a programme for Government, for example. A glaringly obvious example in the report occurs in the note on school transport routes in the Department of Education and Skills. There are approximately 6,770 school transport routes, which is an increase year on year of 474. I have no doubt that there are fewer children availing of school transport provided by the State on foot of the changes that were made to the rules pertaining to how people get on a bus. If one did not qualify, but yet there was a place available, there was an opportunity for children to get on that bus. That is not the situation anymore. It is more refined than it was and that is the type of measurement and performance that I would like to quantify and qualify, but I do not get that opportunity here. Of course, I could use it to go and measure myself, but if the intention is for this committee to measure and adjudicate on performance on behalf of the public and allow them to make up their minds thereafter when the opportunity arises, so be it.

However, I do not think this information does that. It is hard to find a means by which that can be done, but the programme for Government, for example, should be tested against the performance here and an adjudication made. Some would say that the Department is discussing opinions rather than facts. If I immediately see this and put down a parliamentary question asking how many children are availing of the school transport system, and I see a reduction, I do not see that measured here or the performance being quantified year on year.

The other issue relates to equality. There are glaring issues in the public domain on equality, not only about the expectation of equality of opportunity. Fairness in terms of gender and equality of pay for new entrants compared with workers employed prior to 2011 are two glaring issues that must be addressed and we need to see that there is progress on those. Talks are ongoing on pay inequality regarding new entrants and we hope and expect that, by virtue of those talks taking place at all, there is a prospect of resolution. We await the results of that. Those are issues that do not jump out at me from the report. I know that the Department has looked at pilot programmes for equality reporting that can be measured over time. However, if one is talking about public service performance and if the public looks at this and wants to measure what progress have been made on equality, those are the two simple things that I would expect them to find in this report that they will not see.

Finally, I do not know how relevant this might be to today's discussion but the wider discussion relating to the Department of Health and the HSE and so on. The State Claims Agency is accountable to the NTMA. The NTMA is accountable to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. What interaction does the Department have in that chain with the State Claims Agency? Does the Department, in turn, interact with other Departments based on the information provided to it by the NTMA on foot of actions that are taken, where the State Claims Agency is acting on behalf of the State?