Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

We certainly were using recycled products, but I will check it.

The e-Cabinet project is reaching a conclusion. Only minor areas of work need to be undertaken in 2007, associated with the full roll-out and upgrade of certain functions of the system. The system is up and running and the costs have been expended. Future costs will be small.

There is only a small provision to keep the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation subhead alive in the event that it may have further meetings, but no meetings are envisaged in the foreseeable future. The civic forum model is not included in that subhead. I support moving to the civic forum model and made clear throughout the discussions that we are ready to move on that. It would be an enlightened road for us to take, with wider community involvement. If we can achieve stability in the political situation, I hope we can get the civic forum moving. We will play our part in assisting that.

There are new proposals, which the Minister for Finance outlined, where all Departments must show their outputs to ensure they are getting value for money. This must be presented in a format outlined by the Minister in the last two budgets. The value for money subhead refers to work my Department has done on its presentation to the value for money committee.

See this speech in context