Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 3 March 2026
991. Deputy Albert Dolan asked the Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht to provide the web link to his Department’s Q4 2025 published report of purchase orders/payments over €20,000, in line with the FOI model publication scheme requirements; the date on which this report was published; and if it has not yet been published, the planned publication date. [16575/26]
View answer992. Deputy Albert Dolan asked the Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht to confirm, in respect of his Department’s published quarterly reports of procurement-related payments or purchase orders over €20,000 (details supplied), where such reports are published in PDF format but originate from an Excel or similar spreadsheet file, that the underlying data was fully expanded and validated prior to conversion so that all columns including supplier names and descriptions are fully visible and readable in the published document; to clarify whether any quality assurance process is applied to ensure that data is not truncated or partially obscured in the PDF version; and where the source file exists in machine-readable format, whether his Department will make the original Excel or CSV file available alongside the PDF in the interest of transparency, accessibility and data re-use. [16592/26]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 991 and 992 together.
My Department publishes quarterly report on all payments over €20,000 at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/department-of-rural-and-community-development-and-the-gaeltacht/collections/drcd-payments-in-excess-of-20000/. The Q4 2025 report, along with previous reports, are available at this link. I would note that the FOI model publication scheme, published by the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation ([foi.gov.ie/guidance/model-publication-scheme/]), details the types of information to be published with regard to financial information, but does not detail any specific data formats, other than stating particular information should be in tabular form. Notwithstanding this, the Q4 2025 report is available in both pdf and Excel file format and, as previously noted, this will be the case for future reports.
