Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I welcome the initiative and I want to ask the Minister a few specific questions about the proposal. The idea of having specific individuals who will take responsibility for the success or failure of projects is very welcome. Have those individuals been appointed, with matching contracts for projects, so that we may know who are the individuals responsible for the different initiatives?

I also welcome the provision for audit by the Department of Finance of some of these evaluations. How will the process work by which the Department will be auditing the evaluations carried out elsewhere? In the past I have found it unsatisfactory the way in which the Department of Finance has tended to just wash its hands of any responsibility for projects that were going down the tubes. Only recently, as regards PPARS, was it shown that the Department of Finance twigged that serious aspects were going astray and it intervened very late in the day. I welcome this, however, and would like to hear more about how these two initiatives will work.

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