Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

That is available to committees anyway. Taking this specific structured review of value for money, we are talking about approximately €6.5 billion of expenditure being reviewed. We can have ambitious programmes of reviewing 25% of public spending and not get it done properly or we can do it properly in respect of what is achievable and what should, and can, be done. It is not exclusively through this structured review that review of value for money continues when we have capital appraisal guidelines and the output statements from Departments. They will be set against performance next year as against outputs — what people expect to get for the money they spend. I have put budgetary reform processes in place which would generally be regarded as improvements as well.

We discussed this issue before and I took it up with Departments but I expect the areas which have been agreed will be dealt with within the timeframe about which we are talking. As I said, 69 of the 92 are in place at present.

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