Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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92. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform further to Parliamentary Question No 244 of 10 February 2015 and the assertion that the readability of reports published by Government Departments is enhanced by the use of 12-point font or greater, his views on the point size of the font used on page 103 of the Revised Estimates for Public Services 2015, published by his Department; and if he considers such a point size to be easily readable. [8432/15]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The Revised Estimates Volume (REV) is an annual publication that sets out very detailed information in relation to the expenditure allocations that are voted upon by the Dáil.  It contains financial information on voted expenditure across all Government Departments. As part of the reforms we have introduced, the REV also now contains information about the performance of Departments in relation to each of their Strategic Programme areas; this means that the Oireachtas and the public now not only have financial data about how much is being allocated and spent on the Strategic Programmes of each Department, but also data about the outcomes and results of that expenditure in relation to each such Programme.

I agree that the print size is very small on the page identifed by the Deputy in the 2015 REV.  This resulted from our seeking to present the performance information about each Strategic Programme on a single page.  My Department will reconsider how the information is presented in our next Estimates publication; we wish the information to be clear and readily accessible.  Of course most of our publications are accessed via electronic means nowadays rather than via the paper document, and the REV is available on my Department's website () where it can be scaled up to different sizes for comfort of accessibility by the reader.

Finally, the Deputy may be interested to know that a wealth of performance data is now also readily available on the public service performance information website) that we introduced and have been expanding over the last few years.  It now contains over 1,200 performance indicators for 35 Programmes across 11 Departments and is being updated on an on-going basis.