Dr. Patrick Moran:

There is strong political support for it in the programme for Government. It has been growing over the last number of years. The Deputy's point about going beyond is GDP is increasingly gaining traction too. There are many different streams of this going on at the moment. We have green budgeting, sustainable development goal, SDG, budgeting, equality budgeting and performance budgeting. They are all different ways of looking at the same kind of problem. There is a growing realisation that these things represent a potential solution to a problem that already exists and that all Departments have. Even the public service performance report represents much work from civil servants and Departments in all corners of the public service. They have fed in all that information and engagement levels have been really good.

Going forward, one of our priorities is to make sure that we can integrate all those different things. Many of the different budgeting initiatives grew up in different places and are spearheaded by different groups. Integrating them all so that everybody can see they are a cohesive move forward is important for us.