Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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283. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the role of the Government's economic and evaluation service; the number of staff assigned to the body, the annual cost associated with it; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32230/14]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES) is being developed as an integrated cross-Government service to build capacity and expertise and to enhance the role of economics and value for money analysis in public policy making.

The goals of the new Service are to: 

- develop a professional economic and evaluation service that will provide high standards of economic and policy analysis to assist the Government decision-making process;

- ensure application of established best practices in policy evaluation in support of better value for money and more effective policy and programme interventions by State authorities;

- facilitate more open policy dialogue with academia, external specialists and stakeholders across the broad socio-economic spectrum.

There are currently just over 80 IGEES members across a range of civil service grades, made up of existing, suitably qualified staff and new specialist graduate recruits brought in during 2012 and 2014.  These staff operate in designated economic/evaluiation units in participating Government Departments. There are currently 14 Government Departments involved in the IGEES. In some Departments evaluation and economic units were already in place and have either been expanded or will be expanded as part of the development of IGEES. In other Departments, new units have been set up.

The costs of the IGEES are almost entirely associated with the salary and training of staff and are met from within the existing resources of each participating Department.     

Further information on the IGEES and some of the analytical output from the Service is available at  .