Mr. Robert Watt:

I thank Mr. Feeney. They have six months to prepare a new statement reflecting the priorities of the new Ministers. At official level we are now drafting it, talking to our colleagues and looking at the priorities. We will sit down with the Minister, Deputy McGrath, and hear from him what he wants to do over the next three years.

Much of the agenda speaks for itself in respect of managing spending, the review of the NDP and the digitalisation agenda, which Deputy Dillon just mentioned. There are many aspects of what we have to do that are quite obvious. We have to push ahead with the HR reforms and we have to continue this renewal that we have been engaged in for some time now. We have to address issues concerning public expenditure management and the move to an integrated accrual system of financial accounting. I guess these are the broad themes but the Minister will give us his views and we will reflect those in our statement. It is a question of trying to make statements meaningful rather than offering lots of platitudes because there is a danger of ending up repeating many points that do not mean anything. Setting out something a bit more concrete might be where we go. For example, consider the conversation we had today about more clear milestones indicating exactly when we are going to get to the stage of the accounting reform agenda.

We are in the middle of discussing the strategy. Our Department's world involves pre-budget and post-budget phases. We are now in a post-budget phase. One hears people talking about this. After the budget, everybody in the Department sits down to discuss matters. We will be doing this in November. We will be doing it remotely this year, obviously. I will hear from my colleagues about how they are getting on and what the priorities are, and the information will be fed into the statement of strategy.

On the issue of properties, the matter is really for the OPW. I suggest that we organise a note on that from the OPW because I do not have the details here. Obviously, the Garda stations most recently closed down have been converted. The one in Whitehall is now being used by Forensic Science Ireland, I believe. The more modern stations can be used. Many of the older ones would not have much use or value. We can get a note on that for Deputy Devlin to answer his question because I do not have the details in front of me here.