Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Question 113: To ask the Minister for Finance the evaluations of public spending programmes which his Department has undertaken during the past 12 months; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24957/06]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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My Department monitors expenditure on its programmes on an ongoing basis throughout the year. In addition, my Department has completed a procurement improvement project in the last 12 months.

As regards formal evaluations, the Department has, in the last 12 months, completed and published two evaluations under the Expenditure Review Initiative (ERI), of the Change Management Fund and the grant-in-aid to the Institute of Public Administration. The ERI has now been recast as the Value for Money (VFM) and policy review process, with a broader VFM focus, and my Department will complete evaluations under it of the Information Society Fund and the grant-in-aid to the Economic and Social Research Institute later this year.

In the area of taxation, my Department conducted reviews in 2005 of a range of tax schemes, in conjunction with the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, while independent reviews of the various property-based tax incentive schemes and renewal reliefs were commissioned from external consultants. As a result of this major review exercise, I announced in Budget 2006 that a range of tax schemes would be modified or terminated.

Finally, the National Development Plan/Community Support Framework (NDP/ CSF) Evaluation Unit of the Department has completed the following reviews in the last 12 months:

—Evaluation of the In-Company Training Measures under the NDP/CSF 2000-2006

—Evaluation of Water Services Investment in the NDP/CSF 2000-2006

—Update Evaluation of the CSF for Ireland 2000-2006.