Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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170. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the actions his Department has taken to identify the hidden fiscal space to source savings across Departments; the targeted savings each Department is expected to identify, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32373/17]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Earlier this year I informed the Government of the new approach that will be taken to review current Departmental expenditure in advance of Budget 2018. Due to the stabilising of the public finances by Government we have moved from a budgetary cycle where cuts had to be made to one where moderate and sustainable expenditure growth is now planned over the medium-term. However, there are increasing and competing public service demands emerging which means that public expenditure policy must prioritise additional spending between multiple demands. The spending review process supports this.

Officials in my Department have been engaged in work on Spending Review 2017 since January of this year. The Mid-Year Expenditure Report (MYER), which is to be published in the coming weeks, will include a substantive overview of this process. Alongside the MYER, a series of papers will be published that will present the results of the analysis of the wide range of expenditure schemes and programmes that have been examined this year. This 2017 Review is the first in a three-year cycle of 'rolling', selective reviews that will examine all day-to-day Departmental spending by 2019. This reflects a change in approach from the 2011 and 2014 Comprehensive Reviews of Expenditure, which covered all Government expenditure in a single year.

The Spending Review process operates within the wider budgetary architecture and the medium-term expenditure framework, which supports sustainable expenditure policy, anchored by reference to the fiscal rules. The major challenge addressed by the process is to prioritise between policy initiatives to ensure resources are allocated to areas where they can have the greatest impact, while respecting the necessary parameters set by the overall budgetary limits.

The aim of the Spending Review process is not to reduce Departmental expenditure, but rather to examine existing spending within the overall budget constraints by reference to the principles of efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability and impact. The Deputy will appreciate that the systematic and detailed examination of baseline expenditure using available evidence and data can help attenuate the tendency to otherwise focus only on the incremental increase in expenditure in the Estimates each year which constitutes only a small proportion of the totality of overall public spending. The results of the Spending Review analysis will support budgetary decisions and facilitate the consideration of existing expenditure alongside budgetary proposals.