Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands debate -
Wednesday, 26 Jun 2024

Apologies have been received from Senator Garvey.

Members who participate in the meeting remotely are required to do so from within the Leinster House precincts only. I welcome the witnesses. They are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the presentation they make to the committee. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action in respect of anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege and it is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction. Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against any person or entity either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity.

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

The committee will now consider the Public Service Performance Report with officials from the Department of Rural and Community Development. The 2016 OECD review of budgetary oversight by the Parliament of Ireland highlighted the requirement to provide enhanced performance information to support the Oireachtas in assessing the outputs and outcomes from public expenditure. The intention of the report is to enhance the provision of information on the performance of public expenditure and the delivery of public services in a dedicated focused document. This report supports the work of the Oireachtas sectoral committees in assessing outputs and outcomes derived from public expenditure. It is a key step in assessing the value for money from existing expenditure programmes on an annual basis and is in line with the spending review process. Performance-based budgeting aims to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public expenditure by linking the funding of the public sector organisations to the results they deliver, making systematic use of performance information.

I welcome to the meeting from the Department of Rural and Community Development Mr. Kenneth Jordan, assistant Secretary General; Ms Aisling Penrose, principal officer in the finance and evaluation unit; Mr. John Orme, assistant principal officer in the finance and evaluation unit; and Mr. Kieran Moylan, principal officer in the libraries development and community policy unit. They are all very welcome this morning. I invite Mr. Jordan to make his opening statement.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to attend today and to present this opening statement on behalf of the Department of Rural and Community Development. The Cathaoirleach has introduced my colleagues.

The Public Service Performance Report was published on 17 June and provides metrics and information for all Vote groups. This material is compiled by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery, and Reform, working with colleagues in each line Department. As the committee is aware, the focus of the report is on giving a high-level overview of the work of the Department and the progress in meeting targets across our policy areas.

With regard to Programme A, rural development, regional affairs, and the islands, the metrics focus on the major capital grant schemes funded by the Department, including LEADER; the Rural Regeneration and Development Fund, RRDF, the outdoor recreation infrastructure scheme, ORIS, and the town and village renewal scheme, TVRS. These schemes had a combined spend of almost €130 million in 2023.

On Programme B, community development, the metrics mostly focus on the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, and the community services programme, CSP, which are our main social inclusion schemes with a combined spend of more than €115 million in 2023.

Programme C relates to the Charities Regulatory Authority and the metrics relate to the number of charities registered, the number deregistered and the number of annual reports received from charities.

The report outlines continued strong expenditure by the Department, with an outturn of €417 million across all programme areas for 2023. Despite this, it is clear from the report that the Rural Regeneration and Development Fund did not achieve the level of project completion targeted for the year. The larger projects being delivered by the RRDF continued to see the impacts of the pandemic, along with impacts from inflation and supply chain issues throughout the year. However, while the performance relative to targets for the ORIS and the TVRS appear low given the metrics, in fact both had a strong year, with almost €13 million spent by the Department on the ORIS and almost €23 million spent on town and village renewal. The metrics also show the LEADER programme very much delivering in line with plans. This reflects the fact that LEADER is a well-established programme with a strong pipeline of projects drawing down funding. The targets relating to the CSP and SICAP also show strong performance in the year. SICAP activity has increased given the supports provided to new arrivals, including Ukrainians and international protection applicants, with additional funding of €10 million provided to support this element of the programme.

As I know was discussed here last year, the Revised Estimates Volume provides a much wider set of metrics on the performance of the Department. However, this is provided late in the year. Following discussions at the committee last year, the 2023 annual report for the Department will provide these metrics as an appendix. These will be published within the next two to three weeks. It is also important to mention that, through the framework of the Revised Estimates process, the Department actively contributes to cross-Government work on equality budgeting, with equality budgeting metrics for four funding schemes in the Revised Estimates, namely, LEADER, SICAP, the CSP and the senior alert scheme. We have also provided inputs other initiatives such as green budgeting.

The Department continues to place a strong focus on measuring our performance and the impact of our schemes. This includes metrics such as those in the report being discussed today but also ensuring we evaluate our schemes and understand the impact of projects and schemes through case study approaches. I look forward to the conversation today on the report and I hope we can address any questions that might arise.

I thank Mr. Jordan for his opening statement. One of the frustrating things we have seen relates to the delivery of projects under the rural regeneration scheme and the urban regeneration scheme. The Department focus is very much on the rural regeneration scheme. The way this has been structured is in such a manner that it is done through the local authorities or some other sponsoring body. The objective behind this is to streamline the application process so that we are not reliant on communities to do this and to address the matched funding issue.

As the Department knows, some local authorities have been very proactive on this. We had evidence early this year from Roscommon County Council that was ahead of the curve. Town teams had already been put in place in County Roscommon. The physical social infrastructure to try to develop urban and rural projects was already in place. Roscommon County Council also used the additional income it was getting from the property tax, as it had gone to the maximum level it could, to raise a capital loan of €10 million to facilitate the matching funding for this.

Some local authorities have been very good at accessing funding and drawing it down. We have seen the transformational impact this has had in town throughout the country. Other local authorities have been very much behind the curve on this for various reasons. The impact of the fund in these counties has been significantly less as a result. While the primary objective behind this is a competitive fund clearly there are problems in some local authorities in accessing the fund. Whether it is due to the lack of capacity in the local authority itself, access to the matching capital funding or the type of social structures to facilitate engagement with communities, they are falling down in relation to it.

It is clear from the work the Department is doing that it can identify, and the Minister can roll off her tongue, the local authorities performing well and others that are not performing as well.

What has it done to date or what measures could be considered to try to ensure that these laggards in accessing this funding could actually in the last few years of the funding now try to draw down additional funds? Ultimately the communities are losing out as a result of this. I know the Department has brought clusters of local authorities together to share best practice. In fairness, the Department of Rural and Community Development has been very proactive on this. I know it has done this with the mobile phone and broadband task force in bringing the various local authorities together to share best practice. It has done so in this area as well, but it has not been as effective. What more can be done at this stage to try to specifically engage with those local authorities? Ultimately the communities are losing out as a result of that. I apologise for the long-winded question.

I might jump in but others may have something to add. We have a broad variety of experience across the Department. I joined the Department a couple of weeks after it was established. I know that the previous Minister and the current Minister have been very clear on that issue. There may be two issues. There is the idea of local authorities coming up with those plans in the first place and how they engage with communities. Then once they have been approved there is also the delivery issue. The Minister, Deputy Humphreys, has been very clear on the need to address both of them.

We have the town centre first officers. We are running the projects on individual plans for each town which are very successful and give towns the ideas for the different kinds of schemes we operate. Most recently we have been meeting local authorities with the idea of capital delivery teams. The Minister is very clear we need to resource local authorities in a way that allows them to plan. The current resource model is that they get an overhead on approved projects and it is about trying to switch the resource model for local authorities into a place where they actually get funding regardless of the amount of project funding they have drawn down. Hopefully, that will give them resources for planning. Where we take that is very much a matter for the Minister but that is the thinking on this.

The crux of the problem in one way is that the more funding a local authority gets, the more overhead it gets which inhibits the ability of some local authorities to come up with good plans and implement those. A different funding model would involve using the same amount of funding but allocating it across the local authorities. With that we would be developing networks. As the Cathaoirleach said, there are some local networks but the notion is to have a national forum once a year and twice a year bring people together at a more regional level and try to share experience. I have worked in the past on greenways and I know the success of greenways was very much built on that. The people who are really good at it started to share experience and then others could see the success of that. That is where that is going. I am not sure if that answers the question. It probably requires another few months of work on our side with the local authorities before we go back to the Minister to make sure the pathway we are going down is what is needed.

It requires recruitment, etc. Hopefully, we will be able to hit the ground running in 2025 with a bit of work done in 2024 on funding. It would be the same funding in the sense that it will be what we currently give out to local authorities for overhead. A local authority getting a €5 million RRDF project might get a very large overhead with that. However, as the Cathaoirleach said, if a local authority does not have an RRDF project, then there are no overheads. We need to try to share that out more fairly among all the local authorities.

I should also have said there was a CCMA paper on this which helped to move that discussion along. We are on the same page as the local authorities on this. As the Cathaoirleach said, they see the enormous benefits with these schemes. We are trying to make sure everybody gets some of that benefit.

There is a challenge at local authority level. The other side of it relates to community capacity. Some communities are very good at doing this. Deputy Ó Cuív and I have spoken about this previously. Some communities, particularly more disadvantaged urban communities, may not have the capacity and the community leadership is not there. As a result of that, these communities get left behind. Approximately 18 months ago we received evidence from Dr. Karen Keaveney of University College Dublin, which had done a number of pilots in communities along the west coast and found that the indigenous capacity was not there to make applications under rural regeneration or some of the other schemes. UCD worked with them to try to put these plans in place. That is great but many of us would be very concerned that some urban communities will not have that capacity. Traditionally, the communities that shout loudest or have the local leadership are the ones that tend to get the funding. We have seen the impact that has had historically in some communities.

I know that the current Government and the previous Government tried to recalibrate that, particularly in Dublin city with the north inner-city project. However, there are many more disadvantaged communities or communities with a unique set of challenges in different parts of the country. What can the Department do to ensure that well-developed plans can come from those communities which can actually be transformational? I see the impact it has had in County Roscommon, as Mr. Moylan would also know from first hand. As we have been able to make such investment, it has brought a positive attitude throughout the whole community. Far more applications are being made from start-up businesses working with the local enterprise office now purely as a result of the aesthetics being improved, with investment going into the Food Hub in Castlerea, tourism development in Boyle and the technology hub in Monksland. It has had a transformational impact. What can we do to crack that nut in those particular communities?

I will take a bit of that and then I might hand over to Mr. Moylan on the community side. On the initial question, when we are talking about those roles we are talking about the rural schemes. Unfortunately, the funding is only for local authorities that have access to those funding schemes. That would not include Dublin city or Cork city.

I accept that, but while the funding is coming from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, it is very much on the community side as well. I know this is more Mr. Moylan's area and he will come in on it in a minute. It is important that those communities are not left behind. There is still that problem in rural communities, some of which also do not have the capacity.

In our discussions with the CCMA on the idea of having these capital delivery teams, we have reached a point at this stage of being very flexible about where they see their priorities. A number of them have raised the issue of community engagement. They have raised the issue of the people who are in the communities doing this work often being much older people, with no new cohort of younger people coming in to take over that role. There is an element in that plan where the local authorities see. As the Cathaoirleach said, it is through the local authorities. In one way they are the people we feel are generating the projects on scale with the likes of the RRDF. That is one point on community.

Regarding the disadvantaged urban communities, the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, has established the empowering communities programme and the community development programme. One is locally based, targeting specific areas, and the other is actually based on cohorts of people such as Travellers or Roma. They started out as pilots. We have increased the funding to them last year and this year.

They are probably the seed of what the Chair is getting at - the idea that there are people who can actually engage with communities and get those ideas across the line. As the Chair said, maybe on the urban side, we are not in as good a place as I feel we are on the rural side. I do not know-----

Before Mr. Moylan comes in, I have one other supplementary point. Mr. Jordan is correct that this has to go through the local authorities and there is absolutely no point in setting up any other structure or mechanism. However, it comes back to my original point. The capacity is there in some local authorities, and maybe to a certain extent the willingness as well - I do not know - which may not be there in other local authorities.

There is also a role for the elected members on this. This should not purely be the executive and the administration of the local authorities. I wonder if there is a role for the Department to engage directly with local authority members through the likes of the Local Authority Members Association, LAMA, by maybe making a presentation at its annual conference saying that here is an opportunity, and they are asking the elected members to bring this to the attention of their own executives with regard to communities that may be left behind or may not be as vocal, so that we do everything in our power to ensure communities are included and not excluded.

I will be honest; it is not something I have given thought to in the past. We do engage a lot, obviously, with chief executives, and I know from talking to them that they bring the items into councils themselves. It is not something I have thought of in the past. Mr. Moylan might know the answer to this but I am not even sure about our capability to go into the likes of LAMA as an organisation and talk to it. It is certainly something I can take back and consider.

I was going to make one more point on the community engagement piece as well but I have lost it. Mr. Moylan might jump in.

Mr. Jordan talked about the empowering communities programme, which is particularly designed and very much supported by the Minister of State, Deputy O'Brien, to support particular urban disadvantaged communities and to bring together the various stakeholders in defined areas, building on some of the lessons from the north-east inner city initiative in Dublin and so on, and other locally-based initiatives.

With regard to building capacity, the key structure that is in place to support that interface between local government, the community and voluntary sector and local community development organisations are the local community development committees. As members know, they were established following the 2014 reform Act. There is one in place in each local authority area. They bring together the elected members, the council executive, State development agencies and then representatives from various interests, including the community and voluntary sector. Their role has been expanding, and we reviewed what they were doing last year in terms of resources that we have been providing through the additional staffing resources provided to local authorities towards that community function within local authorities themselves. Arising from that review, there was an increase in the funding allocated for this year, and that is now being paid out to local authorities. That is going to enable them to strengthen the resources in that community function in the local authorities, and part of that function links in with what Mr. Jordan referred to in the capital delivery teams around the pipeline of projects. I know that one of the local authorities presented to their colleagues around this, and they saw how the work of that community function also feeds into the identification support development of capital projects. There is a strong link-up there, and the resources we are providing into that structure have increased this year. I hope that will see some benefits.

Some other programme areas the committee will be very familiar with as well have a very strong capacity-building function, for example, the LEADER programme in rural areas, where there is animation at local level, and where the supporting capacity of organisations links them up with other sources of support, channelling the relevant projects for LEADER that are relevant for LEADER but channelling other projects into other programmes. There is also the social inclusion community activation programme, SICAP. It can be seen from the data and the indicators there that it has been very successful. It has also played a key role in addressing the response to the crisis from the war in Ukraine. It operates, obviously, in urban and rural areas, working in particular with disadvantaged communities and groups. In both the case of LEADER and SICAP, all of the contracts for the next five years have been awarded. That process is complete so there is a structure in place at local level through the local development companies, LEADER and SICAP, and SICAP is urban as well. There is also a structure in place in the local authorities, and now that capital development delivery teams will be in place in the local authorities, there should be - and we love this phrase - joined-up thinking on creating that pipeline of quality projects and, as the Chair said, looking at the areas that have been left behind. It is being dealt with from both the local authority side and the community side.

-----and the islands funding is €14 million or €15 million per annum. As a result, when we are told five or six or an absolute maximum of seven indicators per programme area, that indicator gets removed from this report. It is in the Revised Estimates Volume, and the indicator, as Mr. Moylan said, is mainly around the use of subsidised travel services to the islands. I have the numbers here. In one way, they are probably not particularly meaningful. It was 570,000 last year, with 530,000 trips by ferry and 40,000 by air. That is about 30% up on the previous year because of the collapse in numbers with Covid. On the specific question, the issue with the public service report is that we are trying to report on the big financial programmes, in a way.

Before Deputy Ó Cuív comes back in, we have had this out with the Department of Social Protection on a number of occasions. The PSPR is supposed to assist Parliament in its scrutiny of expenditure. However, the rules are being set by the Department of public expenditure and reform on it. We have a very thorough engagement with the Department of Social Protection on this and it has agreed with us regarding some of the indicators that should be included. However, it cannot get the green light from the Department of public expenditure and reform because it wants a uniform performance report across all Departments so it can compare and contrast the Departments but that is not relevant from the committee's perspective. Ultimately, this report is supposed to be generated for us in the context of the committee doing its job. This is not a criticism of the Department here; it is a criticism of the mechanism that is being laid down by the Department of public expenditure and reform. As a committee that has responsibility for the islands, we believe they should be included. It is not about money; it is about measuring what is going on.

One of the points we as a committee are making very strongly - and we would like this to go back within the departmental structure and back to the Department of public expenditure and reform, which we will separately write to after this meeting - is that the islands must be included in our performance report, which is not relevant without that detail being provided on the island side. I am sorry; I have crossed Deputy Ó Cuív.

I am cynical about a lot of this paperwork. There is so much paper being produced and I do not know if anyone is reading it, or whether it makes a damn bit of difference at the end of the day to performance or anything else. I am not blaming Mr. Jordan; I am blaming us being bound to all these OECD indicators or whatever. It does not make any difference to the person at the bottom of the chain who is depending on the service. They would rather the hours were put into providing them with the service. I will not waste any more of the witnesses' time or my time here today because my views on this are well known.

Let us say I went into the Department of Rural and Community Development and went round all the witnesses' desks.

Would I find the initial report that must be prepared, the strategic plan or whatever it is called, well-thumbed on everybody's desks or is it thrown in a corner as a defence mechanism against awkward questions? That is a cynic's view but I have had it for 20 years and still do. The only thing I would say is to make sure it is left open enough that we can do anything we want when we want to do it. I will not waste Mr. Jordan's time. We will leave it at that.

The Deputy's point could be argued. The people who put all of this together would probably feel the same. I have one point to make. It is not compulsory for Departments to include the indicators in the REV in annual reports. As I have said, we will be publishing that in two or three weeks' time and it will include all of the indicators in the REV. You will be able to see the likes of the island stuff. I have worked in finance and in programme delivery and I know that things must be measured at a high level. When this Department was first established, we did not have most of these schemes and we had much lower levels of funding. Fundamentally, we have to be able say that we are actually achieving the expenditure we need to achieve and producing the number of projects we need to produce and that SICAP and CSP are making an impact. If we could not say that, I am not sure I could stand over the spend we have or any increase in that spend. That may be a different philosophy.

In a simpler world and a different time, I found that the thing that increased your spend was whether all the TDs from all of the different parties in the Dáil said the job was being done right or done wrong. That persuaded politicians that money needed to go in. If you had a strong Minister for Finance, he would put the money where results were being got. They did not need any of these indicators. For example, Mr. Jordan can tell me how many ferry services are there but that is not the question. I presume they run on time. It is the ferry services that are not there that are the issue. It is the buses that do not run and the bus services we do not have. That is the problem with this stuff. Anyway, I am not going to waste Mr. Jordan's time.

I think the objective behind this process is to look at what has already been spent. I understand the point Deputy Ó Cuív is making and I do not disagree with it but it is also important that there be a level of engagement between Parliament and the officials with regard to the money that has already been spent. The Deputy is right. Ministers in particular are focused on what is happening next year rather than what happened last year. Even at the level of the management board, as a Minister, it is very hard to look at trying to deliver this year's programme and at what can be put into next year's programme without also focusing on last year's programme, when a different Minister may have been in charge. Parliamentary committees have a responsibility to do that work. That is the objective behind this. I agree with the Deputy on the way some of this is structured. As he will know, we have had a lot of engagement with the Department of Social Protection on that structure. The Departments themselves are constrained. The performance targets should really be set by the parliamentary committees in conjunction with the Department rather than being laid down by the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform. That Department has its own review process but this document is supposed to be constructed and developed for Parliament and yet the rules and how it is presented are being dictated by the public service itself. That is one of the committee's criticisms of the process.

While I know the point was made last year, I will again say that, if there are specific indicators the committee feels need to go in, it should come to us and we will try to work through that process. Another issue on the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform side is the fact that targets are often set a couple of years or even three years in advance. You are then reporting on targets that may not be appropriate. That is what happened with the RRDF. The target was set before the Covid pandemic and we were left reporting on a target that we knew was not achievable. There are some funny issues there.

On the point Deputy Ó Cuív made, I believe the issue is twofold. As a Department, we are doing a really good job on the case study and communication elements, demonstrating the impact of individual projects on the ground and generating interest in the schemes. However, we ultimately still need to know whether we are delivering the number of projects we need to deliver each year. On transport services to the islands, it is my understanding that public sentiment towards them has generally improved a lot over recent years. However, what is equally important is that the trend in passenger numbers is moving in the right direction. If the trend in passenger numbers is going down, something is up. Perhaps the value of looking at the year 2023 is not that substantial but, over time, having these numbers is of definite value in determining whether we are moving in the right direction in the longer term.

I thank Mr. Jordan and his team for coming in this morning and for his broader engagement with this committee. This will be the last performance report presented to this particular committee. Our successor committee will be dealing with the next. I thank each and every staff member within the Department for that engagement over the last four years of this committee. Every single member of this committee hopes that the Department will continue to grow and develop because we believe that it is of critical importance to communities right across the country, both in urban areas and rural areas and on our offshore islands. The work being done within the Department is of vital importance to the country as a whole. Gabhaim míle buíochas leis na finnéithe and thank them for their time this morning.

The committee will now consider the public service performance report with officials from the Department of Social Protection. From the Department, I welcome: Mr. Niall Egan, assistant secretary general of corporate affairs; Mr. Alan Flynn, principal officer for budget and estimates; Ms Michelle Reilly, principal officer in the Department’s statistics unit; and Mr. Hugh Cronin, assistant principal in the budget and estimates unit.

I invite Mr Egan to make his opening statement.

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for their invitation to attend to discuss the 2023 public service performance report, in particular, the elements of the report which relate to the performance of the Department of Social Protection. I have responsibility for corporate affairs in the Department and I am joined by my colleagues: Mr. Alan Flynn, principal officer for budget and estimates; Ms Michelle Reilly, principal officer in the Department’s statistics unit; and Mr. Hugh Cronin, assistant principal in the budget and estimates unit.

Following an extensive redesign, this is the first year of publication of the report in its current format by colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. The report is extensive at over 210 pages and it provides a high-level overview of performance across all Government Departments. As the committee members will be aware, the tasks and challenges facing different Government Departments vary widely both in type and scale, running from those with a pure policy focus to those, like the Department of Social Protection, which have both a policy focus and responsibility for the delivery of complex operational schemes and services at a national level. Nonetheless, the report attempts to provide a common framework to present key statistics that are pertinent to the domains of each of the Departments in a clear and concise manner.

In addition to its core performance budgeting focus on financial metrics and key output measures, and some focus on outcomes, the report has expanded in recent years, adding sections on equality budgeting, green budgeting, spending reviews, the well-being framework and the sustainable development goals. Where relevant to the Department, we have tried to address all of these sections in the briefing that we provided to the committee in advance of this meeting. The PSPR has, due to its publication schedule, a natural lag from relevant statistics, whether departmental or from the CSO, focusing as it does on the calendar year prior to publication.

The Secretary General, Mr. McKeon, provided an introduction to the Department of Social Protection section of the PSPR - the second year of this feature - which provides an opportunity for some qualitative commentary on the quantitative and statistical elements which form the core of the report. As he set out, 2023 was another eventful and busy year in terms of service delivery for the Department. Departmental staff continue to be faced with ongoing challenges in mobilising as part of the cross-government and, indeed, whole-of-society response to challenges in supporting those arriving in Ireland from Ukraine and elsewhere. To date, almost €975 million in expenditure has been provided to support over 107,000 refugees fleeing war in Europe. However, the Department’s engagement with beneficiaries of temporary protection is not just income support, with over 60,000 customer engagements to provide employment advice, 35,000 referrals to job vacancies, employment and training programmes, and more than 20,000 of these refugees having progressed to employment.

Overall, the Department spent almost €25 billion last year.

A key factor in delivering that level of performance has been the continued focus on growing the Department's digital customer base, with more than 7.3 million transactions delivered through the MyWelfare and Welfare Partners digital portals last year. Analysis of demand for the Department's core services shows that, in 2023, demand was up, on average, by more than 30% compared with before the pandemic. Despite this increase, scheme processing times have remained stable.

Social protection expenditure was delivered throughout 2023 by the Department's staff via a mixture of weekly, periodic and once-off supports. The expenditure is a critical social investment that supports individuals, families and communities across the entire country. This investment is key in providing social cohesion, particularly in times of significant challenges for people with the cost of living, as we have seen over the past two years. The Department also worked throughout 2023 on delivering significant policy reforms across its portfolio, including progressing areas such as pensions, automatic enrolment, pay-related benefit and PRSI. I take this opportunity to put on the record my sincere thanks to my colleagues across the Department for their hard work and commitment in delivering these essential supports and services. I also thank our partners and acknowledge their important role in helping the Department to support so many people across the country, week in and week out, throughout the year.

We acknowledge that we are not perfect. Performance is closely monitored by the management team, taking action to redirect resources as necessary to meet challenging performance targets, as is regularly required in such a dynamic and fast-moving environment. As members can see from the briefing, for a number of reasons, we did not achieve all our processing time targets last year, including in areas such as invalidity pensions, disability allowance and child benefit. Areas where we need to improve are both carefully monitored and actively managed. I am happy to report that all three of the above areas have been meeting their targets in recent months.

A core objective of the Department, as recognised in the PSPR, is the reduction of poverty. Social transfers continued to perform in reducing the at-risk-of-poverty and consistent poverty rates in 2023. The national consistent poverty rate was 3.6% last year, which equates to 185,385 people. This figure has decreased from 4.9% in 2022 and 4.2% in 2021. The 2023 figure represents the lowest rate of consistent poverty recorded since the start of the survey on income and living conditions, SILC, survey series. It puts the Government on track to meet the ambitious target set out in the roadmap for social inclusion to reduce the national consistent poverty rate to 2% or less of the population. The 2023 at-risk-of-poverty rate was 10.6%, which equates to 545,856 people. This is a decrease on the 2022 rate, which was 12.5%, and on the 2021 rate of 11.8%.

The 2023 SILC data shows that social transfers, when we exclude pensions, continued to perform well in reducing the at-risk-of-poverty rate, from 34.1% before social transfers to 10.6% after social transfers. This equated to a poverty reduction effect of almost 69% last year. By international comparisons, this is an exceptionally strong performance. According to 2022 EU SILC data, Irish social transfers have the highest level of impact in reducing income inequality in the EU 27. A recently published analysis by the OECD, Addressing Inequality in Budgeting, finds that, for the working age population, the Irish taxation and social protection systems are the most redistributive in the OECD.

A notable feature of recent years, in addition to rate increases, has been the response to inflation in the form of once-off measures. This is also captured in the CSO's 2023 SILC analysis, which now contains metrics that measure the impact of one-off payments introduced by the Government to address the rise in the cost of living.

Beyond the PSPR, the Department publishes a range of statistics in its long-standing annual report, its annual statistical report and other publications, including the most recent actuarial review of the Social Insurance Fund. Another innovation in this regard is the Department's quarterly statistical report, made available online since 2021, which provides a regular quarterly heartbeat analysis of key statistics. This report is available to all via the Department's website. The document is dynamic and, in recent editions, has extended to include statistics on additional needs payments, which is an area of keen interest to the committee.

The broad overview I have presented of social protection performance in 2023 is developed in detail in the briefing material provided to the committee. There is little doubt that 2024 has brought continuing challenges for social protection. The Department tries to provide an agile, flexible and collaborative response to those pressures. I am proud that the Department has demonstrated its ability and flexibility to effectively support the most vulnerable, as evidenced in the past few years in particular. It is our aim to continue to do so into the future.

Last year, I committed to preparing a separate report on key departmental metrics, to supplement the PSPR, for the committee. That report is currently being prepared. I am particularly keen to hear suggestions from members for potential metrics to be included in it or, indeed, suggestions for any possible improvements in the Department's element of the public service performance report. I look forward to hearing the committee's views. I welcome any questions members may have for my colleagues and me.

I thank Mr. Egan. I am smiling at the last part of his statement. The committee has raised in the past the issue of the performance report not reflecting our needs, even though the purpose of its generation is for parliamentary use. This is a criticism of the Department of public expenditure and reform. We have had this engagement with Mr. Egan previously. I will not go over it again. We would like to see the output from his Department but this is part of a broader issue. We had the same discussion earlier with the officials from the Department of Rural and Community Development. The report is supposed to be generated for the use of the Parliament but the criteria are being dictated by the Department of public expenditure and reform, not by the relevant parliamentary committees. That is a weakness in the whole process. For example, the single biggest performance test for this committee relates to the payment of supplementary welfare allowance. That is not included in the report. Having that information would very quickly indicate to us, at a practical level, what is happening in practice and whether it reflects, on an ongoing basis, what we are hearing anecdotally.

Having said that, what we are hearing about the poverty trends is welcome. Historically, the figures presented in the performance report were a year behind. We were getting the expenditure and targets within the Department but the outcomes were a year behind in terms of what was being generated through the CSO. The use of the SILC data and the fact we can now compare similar years are positive developments. The presentation of the report is positive but the fundamental weaknesses are still there. As I said, this is a criticism of the Department of public expenditure and reform rather than the Department of Social Protection. I acknowledge Mr. Egan's comment at the end of his statement that he would welcome input from the committee on the metrics. The Department of Social Protection, in particular, is generating some metrics that are useful to the committee. The difficulty, however, is that a lot of what is in the report, which is taking effort and time to produce, is of little benefit to us, even though the primary purpose of generating this information is supposed to be to assist us. We find that frustrating.

Most of the Department's schemes are demand-led, which means targets are irrelevant. If applicants qualify for a benefit, they will get it. The big issue we encounter all the time is the delay in processing applications. On the other hand, we also find that if the Department is looking for information, it is a case of 28 days or bust. If the information is not provided on time, applicants must start again. The Department is very ruthless with the public, as State agencies tend to be. The medical card people are even worse. They demand that the public meets their requirements within a given timeframe. However, when it comes to reciprocation, the same is not necessarily the case.

This is particularly relevant to means-tested payments. Mr. Egan indicated that 75% of all disability allowance applications were processed within the target timeframe. Why was that figure not 100% or at least in the high 90s? Some cases may be particularly tricky.

A rate of 25% not being done within eight weeks is extraordinary. I presume the Department is getting similar figures for jobseeker's allowance, farm assist and for all the means-tested payments. The second question that was not answered is that if 25% are not done within eight weeks, is it taking ten weeks, 12 weeks, 15 weeks or 100 weeks? How long are they taking because in some cases we are finding cases that seem to go on forever? It seems to be very patchy. Performance has to be reciprocal. We expect the customer to perform and we legitimately expect the Department to do the same. The other issue is that having gone through the report quickly, I have not seen any mention of the appeals office. That is staffed by social welfare staff and while its decision-making is independent, it is administered by social welfare staff. Appeals are going on for a year and more in some cases. What are the performance indicators and what is the performance against the performance indicators? That is the big question of this Department. I presume the Department has target numbers on the RSS, CE and Tús. They do not seem to have been achieved in terms of participants. Is that a policy issue, in that the policy does not match the target? Is the policy too restrictive to allow people to go on the schemes? What is the problem here? What we are definitely seeing is that there is a shortage of people on these schemes. If I am told it is a policy response, in our pre-budget submission we would seem to have headroom to suggest to the Minister that she consider relaxing the criteria for getting on the schemes, the length of time people can stay on the schemes, the means testing and a whole lot of other aspects of these schemes. Until demand matches the target, the Minister will not be under any financial pressure because presumably, she got funding for the target rather than the actual number of participants.

We put a lot of focus in the Department on how we are deciding on jobseeker's claimants. We have a new process called the national processing team to try to standardise decision-making because it would traditionally have been an issue that one office would not necessarily have made the same decision based on the same information as a different office. We now have a huge focus in that regard and we have seen an improvement in processing times. I do not have that information regarding how many have means but we can get that information for the Deputy and report back.

In terms of disability allowance, we obviously did not achieve our target in 2023 as per the PSPR report. We are meeting our target of 75% of claims to be processed but the Deputy raised the question of what happens to the other 25%. That goes back to the Deputy's previous comment in that we do not always get information, particularly in relation to illness-based schemes, for us to process claims. There is a lot of back-and-forth on the disability scheme in particular, about increasing information. I know the committee is well aware that if decisions are made and claims go to appeal, at times additional medical information can be provided and that can account for the appeals being upheld in certain cases. There is an issue there, we are looking at it and we have an appeals modernisation project under way in our appeals office to process claims. We are hoping that that will reduce appeal waiting times. There is an IT component, a change management component and we are putting in additional resources to increase and enhance the decision-making turnaround times. We are focused on doing that continuously. It started last year and is ongoing this year.

Regarding the Deputy's questions in relation to the employment support schemes, the RSS, CE and Tús, I can categorically state it is not a policy response. We are very fortunate as a society that we have the lowest record long-term unemployment rate in the history of the Irish State, at approximately 1%. The net effect of that is that the schemes are predominantly but not exclusively for long-term unemployed people. We have made huge efforts within the Department over the past two to three years, since we came out of Covid, to promote the schemes to people. The Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, in particular is very strong in relation to this as he has responsibility for CE. Huge effort is being put into it. People in receipt of jobseeker's payments and other schemes have been contacted about the Department's employment support schemes. We are finding that with the tight labour market, the targets in the PSPR are higher than the available supports. We are struggling to fill those schemes, largely in light of the tight labour market. We have a record low live register at the moment, particularly on a long-term unemployment basis. It is absolutely not a policy issue. We are making every effort to try to fill those places as best we can.

Mr. Egan is missing my point. My point is that I do not doubt that within the rules the Department has, it is making every effort to fill the places. However, for example, the rules on RSS are much more difficult and less attractive than they were up to 2016. Therefore, my question is, should we look for the rules to be changed so that we make it more attractive? The Department is doing its best within the rules given but it is like the referee of a football game. If the rules are giving mad answers, one does not blame the referee, one changes the rules. My point is - the RSS is a case in point I have raised here many times - the rules make it totally unattractive for anybody with a dependent adult or child to go on the scheme if he or she has any means, which I presume farmers would have. The total they get for 19.5 hours a week is €26 or something like that. Who is going to work for €26 a week? That was the point, that is, while the Department is doing everything it can within the rules, our job is to take the pressure away from the Department and put it on the Minister to change the rules.

The main issue here is the strong labour market performance. If the rules are changed, it will not change that underlying trend, which is the biggest issue. We have changed some of the rules since Covid, we have extended duration on these schemes and, particularly for the cohort from Ukraine, we have increased access from nine months to the CE schemes that are 12 months as a way of proactively engaging with that cohort as they are establishing roots in the country.

To put it in simple English, an average is there. That is like saying a shop only has one standard size of clothes. It does not work. We are getting cases that are multiples of that. They are up to a year in some cases. Would it be possible to get back to us with how long it takes? The witness is saying-----

If we found that the other remainder will be done in 16 and a half weeks we could say fine, but it is not our experience. Our experience is that are a number of these that are going on and on. People are living in limbo and we need to get those figures. This is the big performance measure on the social welfare schemes. It is time and waiting. It is a waste of the witnesses' time, our time and particularly the applicants' time in checking again and again when they will be heard.

One final point; one of the things we presume is that the medical people know the measure of which you are measuring the capability or the entitlement. In other words, full-time care and attention relates to carers, while the inability to work is the phrase in the legislation in relation to disability allowance or invalidity pension and so on. On the medical forms for the doctor, it would be important to explain to them exactly and in short order - we do not want two pages of explanation - what are the things you are trying to find out so that you get a clear assessment as long as the details of what is medically wrong with them are taken and described. You get a clear assessment of whether in the opinion of the medic that the person is whatever, be it incapable of work or needs long-term care and attention, and what that means in simple English. I know it is available but if you are a busy medic with different forms coming in with different rules for different schemes, you are just signing a general medical certificate and while you are answering specific questions, you do not really know what the purpose of the question is. It would be a big help and take a lot of uncertainty out of it. It would probably cut down the time it takes to go over and back again.

As the Deputy is aware, we do have guidelines that are sent to GPs and are available for GPs but I take the point he is making in terms of attaching something and in some way making it more clear in terms of the specific application form. We have reviewed our application forms and some of our illness schemes to reduce their length in recent times but we are always looking at our application forms and we can take that back to our colleagues in terms of the Deputy's views on how that might be an issue and how the form structure could be amended or changed to reference which part of the guidelines are of most use and most relevance as milestones or signposts for the GP. That is probably the best way of dealing with that because I do not doubt the point the Deputy is making that some GPs are not clear on exactly what we are looking for and obviously, we have our own medical assessors to review each case as well. I see the merit in that suggestion.

The Department issues general guidelines to a doctor in respect of invalidity and disabilities. They are all very subtle, including carer's allowance and so on. They get those and when they are in a busy clinic, someone comes in looking for a certificate and they have to fill out the form and that is fine. In a lot of cases, it is expecting a lot for someone to come back and check which scheme they are on. It is a case of realising you are looking at disability now, which is subtly different from invalidity and so on and that you had better get out the book again while the person is waiting there and with a queue out the door. We know that GP clinics are absolutely inundated with appointments and the clearer we can make what we are looking for on the form, the better. It would be a big help if, on the medical certificate, there was half a page outlining the purpose and the measure of the scheme.

We will take it back and will raise it with our operational colleagues. Not too long ago, to facilitate and streamline the process, we introduced an electronic integration with GPs so the medical certificates for the like of illness benefit now come direct via the GPs' office into our systems and we have created a link. We have also used our welfare partners for the insurance-based entitlements and it works very effectively. There are metrics and approaches that we have used that have enabled processing times for all three parties, as the Deputy said, to be reduced. All I can say is we will take his point, talk to our colleagues and see how we can further improve the process and give GPs that information in a quicker, easier and accessible format.

To take up the point that Deputy Ó Cuív is making, at the start of the form there would be two to three sentences explaining what full-time care or full-time attention is. The difficulty is each of the schemes is different and illness benefit is not the one we have the problem with. If you look through the statistics from the Social Welfare Appeals Office, a substantial amount of decisions are either made preliminarily or where it had gone back to the office where the original decision was made and on review, the decision has been reversed because new evidence has come in. What tends to happen is that someone gets the form for the carer's allowance or disability allowance or invalidity pension, he or she fills out the form and brings it into the GP. The GP, at the end of a long day fills out a whole series of these forms, some of which are certificates for employers and others of which are letters that are needed for a medical card. They have a whole plethora of different forms but they are all looking at different aspects. The GP is even trying to remember who the patient is in relation to it.

I have asked the patient to jot down on a sheet of paper what their key issues are that are relevant to the various forms. I have found that when that is actually done, there is less chance of the medical aspect of the application falling down initially. That is grand if they happen to come into me or Deputy Ó Cuív initially, before they go through the process. Usually, what ends up happening is they come back to us and say we have been refused this, my mother is in a wheelchair and yet I have been refused the carer's allowance. She obviously requires full-time care, that is not an issue, but when you go back and look at the medical report that has gone in, you would have come to the exact same conclusion as the medical assessor in the Department. I have gone through it with families and have explained to them this is what has gone into the Department and that is not what the case is with this person at all. It is delaying the processing of these applications, it is leading, particularly in relation to the disability allowance, to the fact that the Department is falling so far short in relation to the target. I think Deputy Ó Cuív's proposal in one simple measure could make a significant difference in relation to this. The worst performing one at the moment is disability allowance.

It could be piloted with disability allowance - on the medical report in that - and a narrative could be put in that this is the test being put in relation to disability allowance. A simple, plain English narrative for the GP would help that. Ultimately, none of us wants to see applications going to appeal, either those that could be determined initially or those determined at review. It is always frustrating to get a black and white case and to have to submit it for appeal. Normally, we get it at review because it is obvious, but that delays the process. The fact that an official has to look again at an application, or send on the medical report to the medical assessor again, is delaying applications of first instance because they have to review existing forms that were previously submitted. If we can reduce that, it will change the statistics we are dealing with here and benefit everyone. It will make the Department more responsive in respect of them because it is getting the data it needs. That is the point that Deputy Ó Cuív is making. It is worth looking at it even in terms of taking one of those schemes initially and putting that through the process, engaging with the medical assessors within the Department, who know exactly what they are looking for, and maybe engaging with the IMO on it.

We can send out all the regulations and all the briefing material we like to GPs but it is not being read. I would hope that my GP is not reading it either. I would rather my GP read the latest research regarding health conditions and emerging health conditions than circulars from the Department of Social Protection. That is what I would like to see my GP reading if they are reading something at night. Let us make it easy for them. The witnesses might take that back and look at it.

Coming back to the point I made about SWA, having the statistics on the appeals office again gives us an indication of where the system is falling down. The report is presented in a way that the actual targets are not in it. The Department has assisted us in providing it in the supplementary information, and that is welcome. Again, the objective behind this report seems to be lost on the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform. I would love to know how many Members of Parliament, either TDs or Senators, have been involved in the engagement that the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform sets out regarding how it structures this report. The report is for us, yet it is not being presented in a manner that is of benefit to us. As I say, that is a criticism of the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform and the way it is presenting this. It is not a criticism of the outputs coming from the Department.

We will take on board the point made by Deputy Ó Cuív and reinforced by the Chair, and we will talk to our colleagues in the Department. We have improved and taken on board lessons in respect of plain English and design for many of our application forms. We have many and it is an ongoing process, so we will take that on board. I might ask my colleague, Mr. Flynn, to come in as well here.

Regarding the point about forms, we did undertake a project in respect of illness benefit. I am sure everyone remembers the MC1 form that would have been in a doctor's office. What is interesting about these forms is that two parties have to fill them in - the customer, who provides details on things like their bank account when they are making the claim, and then the GP who provides the medical assurance. For the project with illness benefit, we split that form in half. The customer is responsible for their part and their part only. The GP fills in the medical part, focusing on the thing that they know about. The GP, for example, does not have to go through all the bits the customer should be looking at and the customer does not have to go through all the bits the GP should be looking at.

The other thing we did with that project was we integrated with the practice management system. Some 99.9% of Irish GP surgeries use electronic practice management systems. By integrating into that software, the GP is working with their customer record for the patient. They have access in that system to all the patient's files they have when they are filling in the illness benefit certificate. It is integrated into the work they do; it is not sort of an add on. It may well be at the end of the day, but it is not a completely separate thing. It is integrated. That approach helped with the efficacy of getting the material in, but also getting quality data from the GPs and providing a way for them to do it holistically in their job.

We will certainly look with our colleagues on the medical side at doing that. The reason we looked at illness benefit first was because of the volume, but obviously things like disability allowance and invalidity have high volume as well.

The point we made in the briefing about the Department's quarterly statistical report, which is providing statistics on ANPs for people, is that we are constrained with the structure of the PSPR report and that is fine as that is the way that report is done. What we are trying to do with the quarterly statistical report is to provide a dynamic, regular thing that can change and we are keen to hear suggestions from the committee and members on other things we might put in there.

In the context of the appeals office, there may be a structural thing there in that the PSPR might be limited to Government Departments. If one was to go beyond Government Departments into bodies under their aegis, one could then get into vast numbers of other agencies. I do not know but I am guessing why one might not go there.

I fully accept that and, in fairness, I have to say on the engagement with the Department's team in relation to data, they have been more than helpful and accommodating to the committee. That is not the point we are making. The point we are trying to make in regard to this performance report and all the time and effort that is going into it is that its specific purpose is to facilitate us as Members of Parliament. That is the reason it is being produced. What we are saying, as a committee, is that this is of little benefit to us because of the data in it. Telling us how many applications are processed in a demand-led scheme on a weekly, monthly or annual basis is of little benefit to us in seeing if this money is being spent properly. I refer to data on the performance of the social welfare appeals office in the context of the number of appeals in regard to the different schemes as a percentage of that, and in respect of SWA and the breakdown of the payments of SWA. Those two sets of data alone will very quickly provide us as, Members of Parliament, with much more information of what is going on.

I accept the Department is transparent in this regard and we can get that data in the quarterly statistics. There is, however, another question about statistical reports but that is not for today. The point I am making is that that data would be far more beneficial to us. As I said, this is not a criticism of the Department. This is a criticism that is focused very much on the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform. It has set a uniform standard across the public service in what type of format it wants. It is dictating as to what we receive, yet this report is supposed to be for us as Members of Parliament. That is the point I am making here. This is, as I said, not a criticism of the Department. I accept, and the Department has gone through it with us before and has explained to us, the constraints that it has met regarding alterations of this and its willingness to commit and engage with the committee. We are flagging this because the Parliamentary Budget Office has been engaging with us on this and it has been pointing out that Members of Parliament, TDs and Senators, are not happy with what they are getting. No one is articulating that, so we want to put it on the record here that we are not happy with what is happening within the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform, in meeting our needs, which is supposed to be the purpose of this report. The reality is we are better off not having this report but instead having a quarterly meeting on the Department's own statistics. This would be far more beneficial to us as a committee in looking at the performance in the Department, instead of officials wasting hours of time producing this report on an annual basis, which is pointless in its stated purpose. That is the difficulty. I do not know if anyone wants to add anything more to it or if there are any final comments the witnesses would like to make.

No, other than that we hear the views of the committee loud and clear and, as we said, in the opening statement, we will send the committee that supplementary report.

It will be largely based on the quarterly report and will be supplementary to that. We hope the committee will find that useful and beneficial, and it will inform its report on the PSPR rather than exclusively relying on the PSPR. We will get that information for the committee over the next few weeks, well in advance of the publication of the report in September, if that is okay with members.

This is the last public service performance report the Department will present to the committee. There will be a new formulation of the committee by the time it comes back again. I wish to take this opportunity, on behalf of the committee, to thank each and every one of you and the team in the Department for their engagement with this committee over the past four years. I thank you for your openness and willingness to try to facilitate, in every way possible, the needs of the committee.

I thank members for participating in today's meetings.