Richard Bruton
Ceist:40. Deputy Richard Bruton asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform his plans to structure the service improvement and reform plans across each Department. [16499/20]
Amharc ar fhreagraTuesday, 21 July 2020
Ceisteanna (40)
Freagraí scríofa
Over the last number of years, a range of reforms have been implemented in order to enhance Ireland’s budgetary framework. A key aim of these reforms is to increase transparency around the budgetary process and to facilitate greater meaningful engagement on key elements of the Budget and on what is being achieved with public funds.
A central part of these reforms is the ‘whole-of-year’ budgetary framework. Rather than focusing budget discussions only around Budget Day, this refers to an ongoing consideration of budgetary priorities, alongside the publication of a range of documents to enhance engagement throughout the year.
Greater emphasis has also been placed on improving and supporting the evaluation capacity of Government Departments in recent years. This has led to the development of a number of additional processes and reports to support the budgetary framework. This includes:
- Performance Budgeting - A key objective of the Performance Budgeting Initiative is to shift the focus away from the quantum of spend and towards outputs and impacts. The Public Service Performance Report presents performance information in an accessible manner and aims to facilitate discussion around what is being delivered with public funds and how this impacts the citizen.
- Equality Budgeting – Equality budgeting involves providing greater information on the likely impacts of proposed and/or ongoing budgetary measures, which, in turn, enhances the potential to better facilitate the integration of equality concerns into the budgetary process. An OECD "Policy Scan" Report on Equality Budgeting was completed in 2019, and was published on Budget Day in October last, setting out a number of ambitious objectives to progress this aspect of the budgetary reform agenda.
- Spending Review - This process aims to place evidence at the heart of policy making, by systematically examining existing spending programmes with a view to assessing their efficiency and effectiveness. This approach can support the re-allocation of funding to meet expenditure priorities.
The Programme for Government commits to continuing reform and improvement of the Budgetary process and proposes that each Minister will be required to produce service improvement and reform plans in conjunction with my Department, within an overall context of an enhanced focus across Government on issues of well-being. In implementing this reform, my Department will look to build on the budgetary reforms already in place and the significant work on public service reform already completed.