Seán Ryan (Dublin North, Labour)
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Question 375: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the amount of expenditure on consultancy by his Department in 2003, 2004 and 2005; the number of consultants engaged by his Department in those years; and the steps which have been taken to reduce the expenditure on consultancy and the reliance on consultants by his Department in these years and for the future. [41724/06]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The information requested by the Deputy is set out in the following table in respect of the two Votes for which this Department is responsible — Vote 28 (Foreign Affairs) and Vote 29 (International Cooperation).

The vast majority of the expenditure on consultancies under Vote 28 during the period 2003-2005 relates to the upgrading of the Department's information technology infrastructure and to the development of an Automated Passport System (APS). The upgrading of the Department's information technology infrastructure covered a broad range of technologies that required specialised expertise in a number of areas.

Under Vote 29, the consultancies undertaken by the Department's Development Cooperation Division cover a wide range of sectors including HIV/AIDS, health, education, governance and rural development. A high proportion of them concern the monitoring, review and evaluation of development programmes and projects commissioned at HQ.

I am very conscious of the need to achieve value for money on consultancy expenditure. The Department commissions consultancies only where specialised knowledge and/or skills are not available within the Department and, particularly in the case of Irish Aid (Ireland's official development assistance programme), where an independent evaluation of programmes and projects is required. Given the overall scale of the Irish Aid Programme, this level of monitoring, review and evaluation is both prudent and proportionate.