Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I hope no one shreds any of the initiatives or proposals from my Department but from time to time people would have a different means or timescale for implementing them. That is always an issue we must try to resolve. The timescales and formats are not always as we set out in the programme for Government; that is part of the system we must engage with. We did an annual audit to keep things under review, to keep a focus and maintain a pressure on trying as far as we could, and we do this for a high proportion of our commitments, to implement them fully or as nearly as we could.

We did not publish the review this year because we are coming to the end of the programme for Government and we decided to go to the end of 2006 before publishing. Obviously there would not be much point in publishing the programme in August next year because at that stage the life of the current Government will be over.

See this speech in context