Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

The Minister evaded the question which was whether he would allow the Oireachtas to initiate the evaluation. We represent the people who use public services and see good and bad. The issue for us is that several other parliaments have very strong evaluation arms available to them. They carry out serious evaluations of performance and are backed in doing that work. The Government has a system, whereby the agencies themselves carry out the evaluations and decide what should be evaluated. It is not open to public scrutiny here, which needs to be reversed. The Houses of the Oireachtas should be in the driving seat in cross-examining the extent to which value is being achieved. That would be a useful change that the Minister should consider.

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