Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

It must have gone through the process. Whether a proposal relates to primary legislation, statutory instruments, European Union regulations or European Union directives, they must all go through the process. It is done in two ways so that it does not become just a costly and burdensome process. This was one of the issues that Departments but especially business felt strongly about. The model involves a two-phase approach. Regulations that have a low impact, that will not significantly change anything, go through a screening process. I cannot tell Deputy Kenny which process the Bill went through. Bills go through the screening process for a preliminary less detailed analysis if it is considered that it is good enough. If there is a full RIA, then a Bill must go through what is a very extensive and very detailed analysis.

To date, in excess of 200 full RIAs have been carried out since the process began. Practically everything has gone through it. In the review process that is currently under way, they are looking at three years of work to see what else they should do, whether the process is too cumbersome and if there are issues on which they should pick up. It is not just a question of doing as we did in the past, namely, to legislate or regulate and build more bureaucracy on top of that which existed rather than finding a simplified way of doing something. The whole value of regulatory impact analysis is that it is thought out in advance in terms of whether it is necessary to have more regulation, statutory instruments or more confined legislation, or whether there is a better, cheaper or more constructive way of doing something. That assessment takes place before we go through it. It is not done by Departments only. There are outside groups in committees, which are made up of business people and others involved who have an interest in the regulation, where they can make their input. I would say the review will come up with suggestions because there was an agreement in Towards 2016 that it would be done for three years and then there would be an assessment. We are just at the end of the three-year programme. As I understand it, every single proposal must go through this initial period.

I should mention that one of the difficulties in year one was that we did not have enough trained staff across the Departments to do this work. It had never been done before as we would just legislate. A training programme has been going on for the past year or two and more than 240 officials across Departments have undergone these RIA training sessions which give staff the expertise. There is an argument in some areas that perhaps within the system we do not have enough highly qualified people and that is an issue that is being looked at in the review.

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