Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 4 to 7, inclusive, together.

Over the past three years, the National Economic and Social Forum, NESF, has prepared reports on the following policy themes: early childhood care and education, care for older people, creating a more inclusive labour market, improving the delivery of quality public services, the arts, cultural inclusion and social cohesion and mental health and social inclusion.

In addition, the NESF has been mandated to convene meetings of the Social Inclusion Forum. This annual forum, the most recent meeting of which took place on 15 November, is designed to give those who are not directly involved in the social partnership process an opportunity to input their views and experiences on key implementation issues under the Government's national action plan for social inclusion, identify barriers and constraints to progress and how best these can be tackled, and debate policy proposals for the future.

The NESF prepares periodic reports on the impact of its work both at national and local levels. A draft report covering the work of the NESF over the period from 2003 to 2006 is at present being finalised. The NESF has recently been reconstituted and a draft work programme for the forthcoming period is under consideration by its members.

The National Centre for Partnership and Performance, NCPP, was established by the Government in 2001 to promote and facilitate partnership-led change and innovation in Irish workplaces. Through a combination of research and advocacy, the NCPP is helping to create high quality, high performance workplaces throughout the country and is thereby contributing to the Government's efforts to improve national competitiveness, enhance public services, increase standards of living and deliver a better quality of working life for employers and employees alike. The NCPP is also involved in promoting the business case for workplace partnership at enterprise level across all sectors of our economy.

The NCPP work programme focuses on the following five areas: partnership, national workplace strategy, workplace innovation fund, research and policy development and communication and information dissemination.

On 1 January the NCPP was placed on a statutory footing as part of the new National Economic and Social Development Office, NESDO. NESDO's other constituent bodies are the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, and the National Economic and Social Forum, NESF.

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