Professor Stephen Kinsella:

Absolutely. That is why I suggested a pilot. I would start up a new programme or initiative. It does not necessarily matter which Department it is in. I would build in the automatic reporting requirements that would be part of any programme-level budgeting. If, for example, the State is purchasing large amounts of PPE and it is being distributed around the country, where is it being used? To where is it being returned? Where is there overuse? Where is there underuse? Where is obvious value for money to be found? There is vast variation around the country depending on individual practices that can be standardised and improved, but only if there is a feedback mechanism through the procurement process. This could be done intelligently. The best place in the world where it is done is Australia. It does programme-level budgeting extremely well, as does New Zealand, which has a similar system. It finds a way to report back on not just how much is spend but what was done with the spending. This is the key step. If you have that, you are able to say "This was a good programme", "That was a bad programme" or "We're going to look at that and see how we can improve". Until that is done, you are just throwing money at something and hoping it works. That probably made sense in the 1980s and 1990s when it was much more difficult to capture this data but now that everything is basically in the cloud, it makes more sense to have reporting.

The State will get larger. It is very simple. The three issues of climate change, ageing and migration alone will force the State to get larger. We will be taking more taxpayer money in one way or another, through wealth taxes, income taxes, corporation taxes and so forth. Taxpayers have to be assured that their money is being well spent. Programme-based budgeting can give that assurance.