Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact that we have progressed to getting a timeframe. I am very disappointed that it will take until the end of the year. The term of A Vision for Change ran out in January; the ten years were up. A Vision for Change provided for an independent monitoring commission, which sat for two periods, 2006 to 2009 and 2009 to 2012. It has not sat since then. Will the Minister of State confirm whether it will sit in the meantime while we are waiting for the review to be completed. A Vision for Change was visionary ten years ago and it remains visionary. The difficulty is it has never been implemented. It foresaw that Governments would not implement it.

That is why they asked specifically for a review after ten years to see how effective it had been and, more importantly, for an independent monitoring group to run simultaneously to monitor whether it was implemented or not. Can the Minister of State confirm the situation in relation to the independent monitoring group?

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