Committee on Budgetary Oversight debate -
Wednesday, 21 Feb 2018

Equality Budgeting Initiative: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform

Chairman

As always, I remind members and delegates to, please, turn off their mobile phones or, at least, to switch them to airplane mode. Interference caused by mobile phones affects the sound quality of the transmission of the proceedings of the meeting.

I welcome Mr. William Beausang, assistant secretary at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, who is accompanied by Ms Sarah Swaine, Ms Caroline O' Loughlin and Mr. Struan Charters. I thank them for taking the time to attend the meeting, the purpose of which is to examine the pilot programme for gender budgeting. At a coming meeting the joint committee is also due to meet the National Women's Council of Ireland to discuss the issue of gender equality. At this meeting we will focus on the quality of the indicators used as part of the pilot programme to measure the progress of each of six Departments, the process used to devise the indicators, the ways in which the pilot programme and the Revised Estimates Volume can be improved to help to encourage greater use of performance information during the Estimates process.

Witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they are to give to the committee. However, if they are directed by it to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and continue to so do, they are entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person or an entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

Members are reminded that, in accordance with long-standing parliamentary practice, they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I ask Ms Swaine to make her opening statement.

Ms Sarah Swaine

I thank the Chairman for the invitation to appear before the joint committee and the opportunity to discuss the equality budgeting initiative. I have prepared a very short presentation to take the committee through the key points of the pilot programme, following which we will be happy to answer questions the committee may have about the equality budgeting initiative.

Our work in progressing the equality budgeting initiative flows from the commitment in the programme for Government to develop the process of budget and policy proofing as a means of advancing equality, reducing poverty and strengthening economic and social rights. There is also a commitment to ensure institutional arrangements are in place to support equality and gender proofing. These commitments are reflected in the national strategy for women and girls 2017 to 2020. Since last year we have been working to implement these commitments in a real and meaningful way. In so doing we have engaged with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the National Women’s Council which have been very helpful in guiding us in our approach.

Before I look in more detail at the pilot programme we have specifically adopted for this budgetary cycle, I want to highlight a few key principles that have underpinned our thinking and approach in this area. We see equality budgeting as a tool that can provide us with greater information on the likely equality impacts of proposed or ongoing budgetary measures. Greater visibility of such impacts enables us to better integrate equality concerns into the budgetary process. It also enables the impacts of budgetary decisions to be subject to greater scrutiny. In this way, we view equality budgeting as an important element of any well-functioning budgetary system. We do not view it as creating a separate and distinct budgetary process for specific equality measures; rather, it is about the equality impact of budgetary policy a whole. From looking at international experience, countries that tend to do well in this area integrate equality budgeting into their existing budgetary framework. That is something we have tried to replicate in our approach by anchoring the equality budgeting initiative in the existing performance budgeting framework in place.

Looking in further detail at the progress we have made so far, on budget day a policy paper entitled, Equality Budgeting: Proposed Next Steps in Ireland, was published. I understand a copy of the paper was shared with committee members in advance of the meeting. The paper looks at the international experience of equality budgeting, the existing mechanisms in place in Ireland to assess equality impacts and also the pilot programme for equality budgeting in operation this year. Given the potential scale of equality budgeting, we have decided, at least initially, to focus on the equality ground of gender. From a practical perspective, this would be the most effective, as there is a wealth of international experience of gender budgeting and it is also an equality dimension for which a lot of disaggregated data are available. Our intention is to learn from this approach and what we will do this year and then expand the initiative to other policy areas and equality dimensions in the future.

In advance of publication of the Revised Estimates we asked the six Departments participating in the pilot programme to conduct an assessment of their selected policy programme area for its impact on gender equality. Following the assessment, they articulated a high level equality objective for the programme. They then selected relevant performance indicators and targets which were set by the Department to enable us to track progress towards achieving the overall goal.

Following that assessment they articulated a high level equality objective for that programme. They then selected relevant performance indicators and targets to enable us to track progress towards achieving the overall goal. Progress towards achieving the targets will be reported on in the public service performance report.

The next slide gives an idea of the diversity of the programme areas that are included in the pilot initiative and the types of high level goals that have been articulated by Departments. Six programme areas have been selected that cover a wide range of Government expenditure areas. Each of the Departments has also published a number of performance indicators related to its objectives that will allow us to track progress towards achieving the equality goals. Our intention is to learn from our experiences with these different programme areas this year with a view to expanding the initiative in future years.

In terms of the next steps, work is currently under way to prepare for the publication of the public service performance report. Following on from the equality goals and indicators published in the Revised Estimates, the report will contain an update on the progress and steps that are being taken by Departments to work towards realising their objectives. In order to guide our approach to the further development of the equality budgeting initiative we intend to establish an expert advisory group on equality budgeting. The function of the group will be to take stock of progress to date and provide advice and guidance on the future roll-out and expansion of the equality budgeting initiative. Alongside this we will also continue our work in supporting Departments participating in the initiative to develop the skills necessary to successfully equality proof policies.

That is an outline of the pilot approach so far and if members have any questions, we will be happy to respond.

Chairman

I thank Ms Swaine for her presentation. Deputy Calleary is first.

Deputy Dara Calleary

I welcome the delegation which perfectly demonstrates equality and commend it on its work. We have been talking about this issue in the abstract for quite a long time so to begin to see it in reality is quite interesting. However, I am wondering about the choice of measures. In terms of demonstrating the potential impact of equality budgeting, there may have been stronger measures and greater challenges to be presented to the participating Departments. While female apprenticeship is really important, for example, access to education is even more important. Barriers to both access and to education completion are crucial. In terms of sport, and given all of the controversies over the past 12 months involving the soccer team and the challenges faced by the Irish women's rugby team, the number of governing bodies supported by Sport Ireland's women in sport programme seems like a very weak measure in terms of addressing the actual challenges in the area of female participation in sport. In fairness to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, it has taken on a very good high level goal. Did the individual Departments pick those measures or did the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform pick them? What are the plans to advance this? I am particularly interested in the measures under way in the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. That is one of the Departments where an equality-budgeting analysis has the potential to have a deep impact and to address many of the challenges facing us. The same is true of the Departments of Education and Skills and Health. The measure chosen in the Department of Health is something to do with quitting smoking. Again, while the objective of reducing the overall prevalence of smoking is very laudable and important, one would imagine that in the context of equality challenges there are other issues in health that would need that kind of analysis.

In summary, who made the choice in terms of the measures? Did the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform at any stage challenge those choices and look for something deeper? Where is this going? Once the pilot is finished, where does the Department intend to bring this?

Mr. William Beausang

I thank Deputy Calleary for his questions. Certainly we would have high ambitions for the work under the equality budgeting initiative and would absolutely recognise the point the Deputy makes. One hears a lot about equality budgeting and its importance and we all understand its significance and value in terms of the contribution it can make but one must ask what that refines down to in specific terms. The indicators and objectives that have been chosen, from our perspective, represent a good cross-section of issues. We are very happy with the engagement we have had from the relevant Departments. The reality is that policy responsibility resides in those Departments and it is often the case that when we look at initiatives that relate to the expenditure framework, there is a somewhat legitimate view that it relates to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and is our responsibility. A good example of that is the issue of performance information. We have engaged with this committee on that issue previously, flowing from the work of the OECD on budgetary scrutiny and parliamentary oversight of public spending with its focus on improving performance information. What we have tried to do is integrate the equality budgeting initiative into that framework but the ownership issue is one upon which we must work with the Departments and we recognise that.

The specific indicators or objectives that are part of the initiative were developed over a relatively short period of time in advance of the budget. As members know from previous meetings, we were working with organisations like the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, and the National Women's Council in 2017 in trying to scope out an approach. When we finally decided on a way forward on this, it was only two or three months before budget day so we had to go to the Departments and ask them to come on board for this pilot initiative. While we have been very clear that there is very significant learning available through the process that we have now established, it will need to step up significantly for us to be able to properly examine the contribution and value that it can add. What we see as very important in that context is the role of an oversight or governance group with experts who can come in and give further momentum to the initiative going forward. We did engage with the Departments on the objectives and, as the Deputy has pointed out, the objective from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs is a very significant one. In terms of the Department of Health, we engaged with the chief medical officer and his team. They thought that smoking reduction was a significant indicator but I take the Deputy's broader point that there are clearly much more significant equality issues to be addressed in the health and education systems.

Deputy Dara Calleary

I am not ranking them but it just strikes me that some are weak. Smoking is one area, for example, where enormous progress has been made in the last number of years with both genders in terms of cutting down. Something in the health area that addressed access to health treatments based on regional location or income, for example, would have been a better measure.

Mr. William Beausang

The education one on apprenticeships is significant given the Government's focus on developing and enhancing the further education-----

Deputy Dara Calleary

I do not doubt that but if this is to work the way we all believe it should, it must highlight the basic and fundamental equality issues in Departments. Rather than looking at a specific stream in education, for example, we should be looking at access to education. The various disadvantages faced by women, particularly by women who do not finish school, should have been the starting point before going on to examine apprenticeships, second level, third level education and so on.

Mr. William Beausang

Yes, but the experts say that pilot schemes should have a relatively narrow application in the first instance. Starting off, we also looked at this in terms of focusing on some of the bigger issues but it was brought home to us that this must be practical. As Deputies will know from engagement with IHREC and the National Women's Council, people have talked around equality budgeting and gender budgeting for a long time but we must land at something that is meaningful and relevant in terms of the budgetary process and that is what we are seeking to do. We are not making major claims for what we have done thus far and we are certainly not saying that we have reached the end of the road in any sense. It is a starting point but an important one at that.

Ms Sarah Swaine

A key element to the success of the initiative is the availability of data and using that data to drive further interrogation. A lot of the Departments may have had other goals in mind initially but they needed further time to scope out the availability of data or put in place systems to record the necessary data. I do not think it precludes future rounds of this initiative having more ambitious goals in that respect. It is important for the first round of the initiative that everybody is able to participate at the different stages and contribute the data that is being collected and for the goals that are currently in place, we will be able to do that.

Chairman

Two Deputies are waiting to come in and I ask them to bear with me for one moment, as I do not normally do this. I want to follow on directly from Deputy Calleary's question because it relates to something the committee has been looking at. There is a high level target of 300 for apprenticeships. There is very little information around that. There are tangible things that are easily measurable. Has the Department figures for things such as the number of overall apprenticeships, the total number of women taking up apprenticeships, what access is there for them to do so or what percentage of uptake would the Department wish to see? In his response, Mr. Beausang said that it was a start and we could do more later but I suggest it was a very limited approach. If any effort had been made at a high level, the Department could have looked at the percentage of women who were able to take up apprenticeships. That does not begin to deal with all the other areas of education which were not touched on at all. Something as simple as saying that there are, for instance, 10,000 apprenticeships and we would like 50% of those to be made available to women by a given date could be done. Was any consideration given by anyone to including something like that as a high level target?

Ms Sarah Swaine

If one looks at that equality budgeting objective for education in isolation, it does look quite stark but it sits in the Revised Estimates Volume on the same page as the entire apprenticeship programme. The list giving the number of apprentices registered on programmes is further up that page. For 2017, it was 4,114 which puts the figure of less than 300 women apprentices in context. It provides context where it sits in the Revised Estimates, including the level of spending in the area and other indicators. I take the point that it looks minimalist when extracted from the Estimates.

Mr. William Beausang

That is part of setting a target. Here we are in the context of the Revised Estimates, setting a particular equality objective agenda in an important area of further education and training. In the policy area, a framework will have to be adjusted when that target is achieved. That is the essence of accountability. They have committed to that objective against the backdrop of where they stand. It will require the Department of Education and Skills to do some very serious thinking about how to make apprenticeships more attractive to women and there is access to them, ensuring that there is a better gender balance. I am sure it is already happening in the Department and predated the equality budgeting initiative.

We are conscious that when a presentation is made about the equality budgeting initiative, it appears to fall on six measures and people can wonder what it is all about. In fact, it is about driving a process of policy-proofing that must be undertaken by Departments and examining a range of issues that relate to how we ended up with such a gender imbalance in the take-up of apprenticeships. The Department of Education and Skills will have to engage on a framework on that basis. What we are seeing here is the end of the pipeline.

Chairman

I will return to this later. I want to allow my colleagues in in the order they indicated.

Deputy Jonathan O'Brien

The apprenticeships issue does feed into a change in policy which is an obvious knock-on effect. In fairness to the Department of Education and Skills, this step-change in policy has taken place, because there was a review of the apprenticeship programme. This examined expanding the programme to make some of the apprenticeships more attractive to different genders and age groups. This process is having a knock-on effect, I just do not know if the high level indicators and objectives are being tied in with the policy at a high level in Departments. I am not sure if it is a case of Departments having an indicator and wondering how they will arrive at policy answers in order to fulfil it. I am unsure how much cohesion exists or the commitment that is there in the Departments to achieve their own goals. Some Departments, such as Education and Skills, have done some policy work but others are not doing it. Who is responsible? Does it come down to the Minister in charge? Is it the officials? What role does the budget steering group have in driving the policy? It would be useful to have the witnesses' comments on this.

Mr. William Beausang

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform showed political leadership in equality and that there was a political commitment to the equality budgeting initiative by announcing it in his Budget Statement in October. It is also reflected in its implementation. It relates to a programme for Government commitment. The Department has long experience of this issue as we try to improve it. It is reflected in the Parliamentary Budget Office's report today on the equality information on the budget documentation. Over the years, the Department has done much work in trying to improve what we call the performance information. Something that we see, and there is much international experience in this, is that if one is very clear about what individual spending programmes are meant to achieve - and perhaps in the past we have not been - it can have a significant effect on improving and enhancing those policies over time. That is the mechanism we see working here. Articulating these objectives in the context of the equality budgeting initiative drives change. I will not sit here and claim that is across the board and that if one were to call to any random Department today and asked about the equality budgeting initiative that it would have much knowledge of understanding, but to be fair it is only a pilot at this point. Given the political mandate for it, our role is to intensify and reinforce the process and, as the Deputy says, ensure that it has a knitted-in quality.

Looking at the Revised Estimates Volume and performance information over the years, it is not meaningful for monitoring performance and holding people to account for their performance, or driving change in the implementation and design of public expenditure policy and spending programmes. That is a challenge for those of us in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform or when we work with colleagues in other Departments more generally around performance information to make information relevant and impactful. On the equality budgeting initiative, we need to look in particular at the issues that have surfaced that the indicators relate to and ensure that change is taking place.

Deputy Jonathan O'Brien

I agree with the Chairman. Even in the area of apprenticeships, the Department has looked at expanding the programme and other apprenticeship programmes that would make it more attractive but we need further data on questions such as how many complete the apprenticeships or how many gain employment afterwards. Having 300 people take up apprenticeships is not the same as having 300 people complete them and gain employment. If the Department is really looking at equality proofing, it will need to go beyond the indicators that are currently set. Is it the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform's role to push the other Departments? How much of that will fall back on the Departments themselves? Can the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform go in and tell them the indicators or are the other Departments setting their own?

Mr. William Beausang

We always like to think that we are collaborative and work together with Departments. The answer to the Deputy's question is that it is a shared responsibility. Given that the Department and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform have ownership of the equality budgeting initiative, as is reflected by our presence today, we are in the driving seat and seek to work with Departments with the benefits of external expertise that I spoke of to deepen the process. The point Ms Swaine was making in the presentation was that we have a framework and a way of doing it which reflects best practice advice and experience in other jurisdictions.

We want to try to make it real and impactful in an Irish context. However, the first step is to have the framework because, as I stated earlier, when one is dealing with the spectrum of poverty proofing, equality and gender budgeting, gender mainstreaming and so on it can all get very dense and theoretical and we are trying to boil it down and make it simple, clear and straightforward to drive the type of changes that Deputy O'Brien mentioned.

Ms Sarah Swaine

In terms of driving from the centre the quality of the indicators, over the past two years, although we tried to significantly improve the quality of the indicators in the Revised Estimates, we also centrally produced a guidance note in consultation with the staff of the Houses of the Oireachtas and the Departments to try to give guidance in selecting real and meaningful indicators. That had an application to the equality budgeting initiative but in conjunction with the advisory group we are setting up we will consider specifically tailored guidance for the equality budgeting indicators to assist Departments in selecting indicators.

Deputy Thomas P. Broughan

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their work on this issue. The fundamental point is whether this was a political decision. Although the six areas are somewhat valuable, what of apprenticeships? There is a difficulty in getting both genders to undertake apprenticeships, which must change, given that the professions of qualified plumbers, carpenters and other tradespeople are among the most useful and important in society. The authorities in the United Kingdom considered establishing degree-level apprenticeships in order that people would have the same level of qualifications whether they were economists, carpenters, doctors or members of another profession. That would add value to apprenticeships and could be considered in terms of making them attractive to both genders. Also of interest are the situations in regard to arts and sport.

Was a political decision behind the approach taken in this area? If the members on this side of the table were asked to address the issue, we would identify the most glaring inequalities in budget expenditure and see what could be done to address them. Social protection accounts for approximately a third of budget expenditure and there is still great discrimination in how it is distributed. This morning, the Taoiseach engaged with Deputy Paul Murphy on job activation. Women are discriminated against in job activation. As regards housing, families headed by a lower-earning woman face all kinds of discrimination in the context of a desperate social and affordable housing deficit. Would it not have been more useful and immediate to address the big political expenditure decisions for which the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, is also responsible? I appreciate that steps in that direction are being taken. I presume regard was had to the situations in the Basque country and Austria, which are of interest. Some members met members of the Scottish Parliament last year and heard about a similar programme there. Why was the other approach not taken? Why did the Department not start by trying to remedy the really glaring inequalities?

Mr. William Beausang

Our assessment, and possibly our instinct, was to walk before we run. We consulted widely with experts. Ms Swaine attended an OECD conference on gender budgeting and we took away lessons from other countries. The lessons are not particularly reassuring in terms of the effectiveness of gender budgeting. Many countries have engaged in gender and equality budgeting but whether that delivered the results for which people hoped is open to question. Although I cannot recall the exact figures from the OECD survey, there was difficulty in identifying where an engagement with equality and gender budgeting generated clear change rather than shedding more light on issues such as those referred to by Deputy Broughan.

I do not wish to be defensive about the pilot programme but it has been of benefit. The child care issue and the objective in that regard is very significant and relates very directly to more general economic policy because the maintenance and enhancement of our growth rate over time will be achieved by enhanced female labour force participation and child care is an important element of that. The objective regarding the level of female recipients of Science Foundation Ireland research grants is a very important signal for women in terms of access to STEM courses and their participation in that area.

Data and the availability of data are huge issues, as mentioned by Ms Swaine, because although the equality budgeting initiative is being referred to as a new initiative, distributional analysis has been conducted on the budget for many years using the simulating welfare and income tax changes, SWITCH, model, with which I am sure the Deputy is familiar. It generates a significant amount of very useful information on the distribution impact of budget changes but there are many gaps and shortfalls in that information. To try to build on and enhance the information available from SWITCH, the Department carried out social impact analysis whereby officials considered particular areas of public expenditure to try to form a baseline of information such that we have an understanding of the impacts of particular spending programmes on individuals and households. In some instances, we found that the impacts were not very aligned with the initial objectives of the spending. We are attempting to strengthen the general approach we take to these issues and the equality budgeting initiative is an important part of that. We are not yet at a point of development whereby we can start embracing very substantial and significant issues that might have gender equality implications because we do not have the tools or data to do so, nor the experience of how to progress from an understanding of what these gender and equality issues are to how to change policy to address them. At a certain level, what we are trying to do and the process we have described today is the easy part. The difficult part is the change driven from a better understanding of a particular spending area.

Deputy Thomas P. Broughan

I appreciate the issues of which I am thinking are political decisions but it seems that to have gone after key areas of inequality, to set up channels to do that and to set in train the process in other areas might have been important. I note that a point made in the papers we have been given or in one of the witnesses' contributions is that in terms of cost-benefit analysis it is a huge positive for a country to deal with these issues and ensure that we get the input of all citizens, and that is the case in terms of GDP or GNI or whatever it is now called. Has the Department done any costings on benefits of the programmes in the six areas?

Mr. William Beausang

No costings have been carried out on the six areas but there is very authoritative international research that addresses the very significant macroeconomic benefits of female labour force participation, increased female participation in STEM studies and so on and which highlights that issues such as equality and gender budgeting are central to economic performance over time. From the perspective of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, that is an important backdrop to what we are trying to achieve in this area, given the importance of the macroeconomic framework in generating the resources for public spending.

Deputy Thomas P. Broughan

In the context of the steering group involving other organisations from civil society and so on, will the Department work through the process and then revert to us fairly regularly in respect of our input into budget 2019?

We want to see serious impacts coming out of the Department's work and our discussion.

Mr. William Beausang

If that is the committee's requirement or aspiration we are happy to support it.

Deputy Thomas P. Broughan

We will obviously see the results and the delivery.

Mr. William Beausang

From the work we have done over the last year, we have learned the importance of input from the experts. There is a lot of expertise and understanding of what does and does not work and of how we should move forward with an initiative like this. We will be seeking to draw on that expertise and understanding so that at some stage in the course of this budget cycle we can come back to the committee and update it not just on what we have achieved in terms of looking at the initial indicators, but on our ambitions for the initiative's development into the future, reflecting the requirement which the Deputy sought here this afternoon. As we understand it, there needs to be a stepping up over time as the initiative is developed.

Deputy Thomas P. Broughan

Based on the Department's work and research, what are the best two or three exemplar countries? Would it be Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries or New Zealand?

Ms Sarah Swaine

Austria is generally regarded as the world leader in this area but, again, its approach is still in its infancy. It was adopted into the country's constitution in 2012 and has been up and running in practice since 2013. It also adopted a performance budgeting framework at the same time. It brought both in together. Again, they are still in the early stages of development. The OECD is just concluding a review of that model and it will be advising on a few of its pitfalls. We will be looking to that piece of work with interest in order to incorporate it into our own learning. Austria, Iceland and the Nordic countries tend to fare quite well in this area.

Deputy Dara Calleary

Austria adopted this in 2012, how long has it been in practice?

Ms Sarah Swaine

The indicators were first in place in 2013. It is now mandated that every expenditure programme or line Ministry needs to have five high-level objectives, one of which must be gender related. There is huge diversity in the types of objectives across the system in Austria, but it is part of its regular budgetary process. It is something we are trying to mirror and integrate into our regular documentation such as the Revised Estimates and performance report. We want to use existing mechanisms and to build on them.

Deputy Dara Calleary

It will still be quite limited if there is only one per spending Department, or was it five?

Ms Sarah Swaine

It is one per programme. It is a similar approach to that which we have adopted here. It is not limited to one objective, but that tends to be the case. That then flows downward to a number of indicators. It is included in the strategy statement of the Department itself and informs its work programme. It also filters upwards to parliamentary scrutiny. That is how Austria has approached it and we are learning from it. Many of the countries working in this area are still at an early stage of development and are learning from each other. There is an OECD group on gender mainstreaming and budgeting. It had its inaugural meeting last year and will meet on an annual basis to share learning.

Chairman

I have a couple of points of my own. The way I look at it, there are a couple of things involved. On ownership of the whole thing, there were some initial comments made about departmental ownership. I very much welcome the decision of the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, on this and his implementation of the pilot programme. I would strongly suggest that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform grabs this by the scruff of the neck, as it would in many other areas, and say that it wants to drive this as an integral part of its work and to have ownership of how it will work right across all areas of Government. It cannot be left to departmental ownership.

The second thing is that few good things come out of a recession and a collapsed economy, but there is one small thing which can be looked at in this area. Things are now getting better and money is coming into the system. Fresh money has been made available. Consideration of gender should be hugely important when looking at that money and where it is focused in terms of the programmes and funding commitments to future programmes. It is not a situation of pulling money back from somebody else, but of looking at and pushing key areas in terms of future balance. I accept that it is a pilot programme and that there is headline stuff in it but someone mentioned walking before one can run in this area. This is more strolling than walking. It is very limited. Even as a pilot it does not give us enough in this area on which we should be really focusing.

To put an example to the witnesses, we might consider the area of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, and encouraging women into it. Part of that work is obviously linked to education, schools, and access to STEM for women at second level - particularly in respect of providing courses in single-gender female schools. There is no point thinking about that in an abstract manner at one particular level. That is an example of where there must be an overarching view, because two or three Departments could cross each other on this. There is no point in one Department teeing up a target if it is not being supported downstream.

In one of the more positive examples, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs key indicators really do address some of those issues I and some of the other members have raised. For example, if one is talking about women's involvement in the workplace, an associated key indicator is crucial. In the case of some of the other Departments the approach is just too abstract. The approaches give some interesting information but I do not see how they give us the policy change, or even the start of it, through this pilot programme. I do not know which of the witnesses would like to respond to my comments.

Mr. William Beausang

I would not like to give the impression that we are taking a hands-off or laissez-faire approach to this. The Minister announced it in the budget and it is a commitment in the programme for Government. Significant Department of Public Expenditure and Reform resources have been committed to moving forward on equality budgeting, as reflected in the work which has been done. In all elements of the Department's activities we come to a point where we have to collaborate and co-operate because we do not have responsibility for other Departments' policies. It would be naive of us to think that we can drive changes in them. We hope that we can drive change in policy through the framework. I take the point the Chairman is making on ownership. We are focused on ensuring that there is a clear direction to this work led by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

The point the Chairman made on the availability of resources is, of course, very important. As the Chairman will know, the Minister has consistently focused on the whole stock of resources out there. In the context of the kind of work being done in the Department at the moment in the second year of the spending review, ensuring that resources are devoted to priorities which are impactful, effective and efficient is a big priority for the Department. Gender and gender equality objectives are part of that.

Ms Sarah Swaine

While we are working with the Departments, as Mr. Beausang said, to drive improvements in quality, one of the things that really improves the quality of information we get to publish is when Members of the Oireachtas on the various sectoral committees and on this committee question Departments on the quality of the indicators and really scrutinise what is being provided. That has a knock-on effect that leads to better quality information being provided in future years. That is quite helpful.

Chairman

If there are no further questions I would like to thank the witnesses for attending here today. We appreciate the work being carried out. It has been a very interesting and worthwhile exchange. As there is no further business I propose to conclude our meeting. The committee stands adjourned until 4 p.m. on Tuesday, 27 February, when we will be hearing from the National Women's Council of Ireland on this same topic.

The select committee adjourned at 3 p.m. until 4 p.m. on Tuesday, 27 February 2018.