Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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138. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the reason no spending review papers were published prior to the announcement of Budget 2025; if he will confirm when such papers are expected to be published; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40249/24]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Expenditure reviews are a key component of the public expenditure management framework. They began with the special group report 2009 which initiated the first Value for Money (VFM) process, followed by two comprehensive reviews of expenditure (CRE) 2012-2014 and 2015-2017, two spending review cycles 2017-2019 and 2020-2022 and a one year process in 2023.

Since 2017 the spending review process moved away from a centralised top down approach to facilitate Departments to analyse the efficiency and effectiveness of their own key policy areas. This approach widened the scope for focus around evidence based policy making and not just a cost focus; though this remains a critical objective of the process. By the end of the 2023 process a total of 184 research papers had been published.

All spending reviews since 2017 are published here; www.gov.ie/en/policy-information/7dc2b1-spending-review/#spending-review-papers-2020.

Spending Reviews are not the only outlet for policy and spending research. Departments publish internal papers on their own websites and indeed my own Department has published it's own research in the Health and Housing areas on our website in July this year. The Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service personnel also publish various Departmental analytical papers under their banner at

www.gov.ie/en/collection/a3f0b-igees-publications/.