Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will deal with the citizen survey first. The plan is to consult with the Opposition parties on the questions. I imagine it will be much more straightforward than people expect. It will be questions about public satisfaction with different Government bodies, for example, and public knowledge and awareness of Government policies and the different programmes run by the Government, to see if there are information deficits in that regard. I have not been consulted on it so I have not seen a list of questions yet. As Deputies will appreciate, I have many things on my plate and many other priorities at present, and going through a list of questions for a citizen survey has not been one of them in the past couple of weeks given everything else that is happening. However, once I have been consulted, it is intended to consult the Opposition parties.

The SCU title still exists and will exist until July. We are in the transition period at present and the title is still being used. It is intended that the €2.5 million will be remitted back to the Exchequer, but obviously there is the possibility that there may be overruns in my Department and they would have first call on it. For example, a number of commissions of investigation are run through my Department and there is a possibility that the money might have to be veered from that budget line to commissions of investigation. As things stand, however, we expect it will be remitted to the Exchequer. That means my Department's budget will have fallen significantly this year. As I mentioned previously, I have fewer advisers than the last two or three taoisigh and spend less in terms of the Department's overall spend. Obviously, spending in other areas is increasing but not in the Department of the Taoiseach.

With regard to policy decisions, I take responsibility for all policy decisions I make. Administrative decisions or decisions made by third parties may be different, but I take absolute responsibility for any policy decisions.

Regarding public input and how public input can guide the work of the communications section of the Department, the intention of the citizen survey is not only to do the things I mentioned already but also to identify where there are information gaps where people are not aware of services the Government provides for them or of Government policies and plans for reform. However, it is not always necessary to survey citizens in advance. With Project Ireland 2040, for example, it would have been a waste of money to have carried out a survey before it had been published asking people if they knew about it. Of course, they would not know about it. How could one know about something that has not yet been published? There will be information campaigns, therefore, where we wish to inform people about what is happening, and it is not necessary to survey them to find out that they do not know about something that has not been published. Obviously, they would not know it. That is where information campaigns could be Government directed.

Another obvious area is pension reform. We have produced a detailed action plan for pension reform. It maps out how we are going to reform the pension system in a number of ways over the coming years. The centre piece of that is auto enrolment, moving towards a system whereby everybody is enrolled in a pension scheme. That is very important, particularly for people who work in the private sector. Two thirds of them have no pension provision other than the State pension. That is an area where we will have to inform people about what is happening and what is coming down the tracks in terms of pension reform. It might well make sense at the outset, as part of the citizen survey, to assess to what extent people know about the Government's plans for pension reform, whether they have heard of auto enrolment and so forth. I would wager that few people have heard of it. I do not know whether it is necessary to do that as part of the survey, but it is something that could be considered.

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