Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

In many cases, regulatory impact assessments form part of memorandums for the Government. They come before the Government and are subject to that wider confidentiality rule. However, as for being able to explain the basis for legislation and the reason a particular range of steps or initiatives have been taken, debates on legislation, whether on Second, Committee or Report Stage, offer an opportunity for people to glean from the Minister what is the background to the assessment.

Moreover, many Departments publish RIAs and relevant legislation on their websites. There are many issues that must be considered when assessing the best way to manage the publication of legislation and RIAs on departmental websites. These issues include accuracy, consistency across Departments and other technical issues. The Government works closely with stakeholders, including the RIA network, as to the best approach to implementing the recommendation. New RIA guidelines give specific details of where to publish revelatory impact assessments on departmental websites. It was agreed that if a Department's website already has a legislation page, then the RIA should be published next to the relevant item of legislation on that page. If no such page exists, the RIAs must be published on a dedicated RIA page, together with a link to the legislation to which they relate. This has been the practice recently.

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