Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent)
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71. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he will provide in tabular form, the dates of meetings of his Department's management advisory council from 2011 to date in 2014, inclusive; the civil servants present at each of these meetings; if he or his Department's Minister of State was present at each of these meetings; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45480/14]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The Management Board of my Department is a management advisory body established to ensure my Department is managed as a corporate entity. This envisages the Board taking a central role in the formulation of strategy, in the development and monitoring of the business planning process, deciding resource allocation and ensuring that issues of a key policy, strategic and management nature are discussed collectively before submission, as appropriate, to me for consideration at a political level.

Since January 2014, the Management Board has been meeting on a weekly basis, with the exception of August. Prior to this, the Board met fortnightly. The dates of these meetings are set out below in tabular form.

The Board is comprised of the Secretary General, the Assistant Secretaries assigned to the Department and, until the integration of Forfás into my Department on 1 August 2014, the Chief Executive Officer of Forfás. The Principal Officer with responsibility for the Management Support Unit attends each meeting as an ex-officio member and the Private Secretary to the Secretary General also attends to record the minutes of the meeting.

Depending on the agenda for the meeting, other individuals, from within or outside my Department, attend Management Board meetings to participate in the discussion of a specific item. In addition, the Board meets formally with all heads of Offices and Agencies under the aegis of my Department at least once a year.

The Management Board drives and monitors the business planning process in the Department each year. It carries out a mid-term review of progress in quarter three of the business planning cycle and approves, in quarter four, new plans for the following year. In addition, the Board considers a wide range of issues which impact on the Department’s strategies, policies and practices across areas such as enterprise policy, labour market policy, trade policy, employment rights and industrial relations, science, technology and innovation, EU issues, company law, consumer and competition issues and many more.

I discuss decisions of a policy or strategic nature directly with Board Members and their colleagues on a frequent and ongoing basis. Neither I, nor my Ministers of State, are present at Management Board meetings. However, I do hold regular Ministerial Management Board meetings and since 2011, I, together with my Ministers of State, have held a total of thirty Ministerial Management Board Meetings.

1st January – 25thNovember 2014