Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputy. I will start with the first question on output indicators. I take his point that the output indicators are few and may not be so relevant to what we would expect to see as a list of key performance indicators for a budget. There is an attempt to keep them consistent from one year to the next so we can chart them from year to year and see how progress is going. If the Deputy wants to introduce any new output indicators, I am happy to take that on board. It is negotiated between the Vote section and the Secretary General of the Department, who is the Accounting Officer. The output indicators should show the kind of things that people think are the most important ways to measure a particular body, in this case the EPA. If the Deputy has suggestions for what he thinks should be measured, I will take them on board. In my view, they should be output indicators and not indicators of activity. It should not be about how many activities took place but rather how many outcomes took place or how many things were achieved. We could make that point about any of the output indicators across the budgetary categories. They tend to remain static from one year to the next to enable inter-year comparison, but they probably need to be updated. If the Deputy wishes to suggest to me what they should me, if he wants to contact me, or if the committee wants to come up with a list of preferred indicators, I am happy to see if we can incorporate them.