Mr. Ronnie Downes:

If a project is going wildly over budget, that would come to our notice. The oversight and monitoring of public expenditure is part of our general role. When projects are going through the public spending code, for example, we have a role at the very outset in having a critical look at the business case that has been developed. The project then goes back to its various approval stages. I am talking about major projects in this case. Projects over €100 million always automatically have to come to us and to the Government for approval. Smaller projects below that threshold are, generally, matters for each Department to manage within its own resources and would only really come to our notice if, for some reason, they have gone particularly off the rails or there are some issues that the relevant Department wants to bring to our attention. That Department might figure there is a requirement for extra resources in a budget or something like that. Generally speaking, individual projects are matters for Departments to govern.

I was going to make the point that one of the projects under way at the moment, arising from that earlier analysis, is to take a closer look at how bodies and institutions at the centre, such as the OPW, the NDFA, the national investment office in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the OGP, co-ordinate their activities to provide a better, more seamless and transparent service to the various other Departments and agencies that may require support. That project is also looking at how the various levels of expertise that exist within the system can be better disseminated and transmitted throughout the professional cadres within the public service.

On the second part of the Deputy's question about how priorities are identified, this goes to the heart of the exercise we are now involved in as part of phase 2 of the NDP review. The Department is engaged in strategic dialogue, as we call it, which is a series of bilaterals involving Minister-to-Minister meetings between each of the Ministers in charge and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, to talk about what the priorities are within each of the sectors. Pretty much every Department has its own sectoral priorities, whether these are in the rural space with the Our Rural Future policy document and how we develop rural communities, the arts, which has its own vision, or the Garda and courts reform agenda. In that overall context, we have learned over time that it is not a set-piece discussion and no one Department will have a set of priorities that are immutable from year to year.

On the example the Deputy gave of the cyberattack, certainly, we in the Civil Service and public service have learned some lessons from that. Our colleagues in the Department of Health and in the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, OGCIO, have been developing strengths, capacities and different modalities at the centre. That will, in turn, feed into how Departments prioritise their use of capital within the envelopes they have. However, it is an ongoing process. The priorities are a mixture of administrative necessities, emergency responses and, of course, political vision and direction for the future. All of those go into the mix in coming up with the priorities that find expression in the capital envelopes that will be set out in the NDP and in the capital plans each individual Department and agency will bring forward. That in turn feeds into the accountability discussion involving Members in the different forums within Dáil Éireann.