Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 9 relates to the Minister having the information I believe she needs to have. I was concerned to see that the Bill provides that the controller simply shares information on the number of reviews. It is a set of numbers that could almost be put on a Post-it. It is simply the number of applications received; the number withdrawn; the number in respect of which a certificate was issued; the number of appeals; the number of appeals that were successful; the amount of fees; and such other statistical information as may be prescribed.

The Minister will get a small page with a set of numbers which will not give qualitative information to allow the Minister to evaluate how the measure is working, how effective it has been and the trends that are emerging. That is an essential role for the Minister. It is not simply her role to sign off on expenditure and send it off into the world hoping for the best. We need to know what is happening and how it is going.

I have purposely left the wording of my amendment open in seeking that the Minister would have "general information as to the operation of the scheme including the main reasons for refusal of KDB certificate issuance and any emerging trends that may be of interest." For example, do they all relate to medical devices? Are we seeing a huge number of applications in one particular sector? The Minister needs to get qualitative information from the controller to allow her to review and decide whether we might need to revise or improve on the knowledge box in future. That is a request for the Minister to seek stronger information for herself.

I will withdraw the amendment and am happy to work with the Department in the interim. However, I will reintroduce it or a variant of it on Report Stage. I believe it is essential. It is simply not enough for the Minister to have a set of statistics with no content.