Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

This section provides that an officer of the Minister is to monitor the performance by a contractor of his or her functions. A person appointed as a monitor "shall, not later than 31 March in each year, prepare and submit a report to the Minister on the performance by a contractor of his or her functions under an agreement in respect of the year immediately preceding the year in which the report is so prepared and submitted". Under this section, somebody in the Department would have the first three months of every calendar year to prepare a report on how the contractor had functioned in the preceding 12 months. That report would be given to the Minister. If it has no significance in terms of security or confidentiality, it will be available in the Department under the freedom of information legislation. However, if it did have such significance, it would not be appropriate that it should automatically have to be published. It is better to use the existing mechanisms to deal with this matter rather than require all of these reports to be published, regardless of whether they are right or wrong, the rights of third parties or other such issues which I would have to consider if the reports were automatically made public.