Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

Like other Deputies, I am pleased to speak on this debate. I must state it took a while and I am much relieved that the Bill is now before the House. I want to start by going back to basics, as they say, by reminding the House that the ultimate measure of any reform agenda in the public sector will be the experience of citizens seeking and accessing services. This will be the final jury as to the success or otherwise of reform in this area. There will be much debate in the House over the coming months and years about outputs and outcomes, expenditure frameworks and ceilings, and performance budgeting. We all know an agenda of modernisation and reform is significant and that it cannot be delivered overnight. There are no quick fixes. In the past, mistakes have been made. Half-hearted attempts at reform have failed. Often, public policy was shaped around self-interest and sometimes electoral gain. Civil Service pay grades for those at the very top have skyrocketed while pay at the bottom has nose-dived and, as we speak, 10% of those families in receipt of family income supplement are civil and public service workers. This pay gap is unlikely to change under the current administration since the Government has committed to basic salaries of up to €200,000 for top civil servants, including the Taoiseach and his Ministers.

A two-tier health system has been nurtured and actively encouraged, not by accident but by design. Many children are taught in damp and grotty prefabs. Those with special needs and their families have been utterly failed by the State. Carers are left to cope alone. All of this happened on the watch of Celtic tiger Ireland. We know now that the legacy of the "boom" as it was called was an increase in inequality. Unless this endemic and fundamental inequality in public service provision is removed, the Minister's commitment to reform is meaningless.

The Minister has promised to be more focussed on citizens. To be more focussed is not good enough. The people must be front and centre in the reform process. The public sector exists for one reason and one reason only, and this is to serve the public good. If the Government is to serve the public good, it must prioritise investment in services, in the good times and the bad.

Investment in public services is not something this or previous Governments have embraced. The OECD report of 2008, Towards an Integrated Public Service, notes that despite an increase in the number of public sector employees between 1995 and 2007 - and we must bear in mind that we were starting from a very low base relative to other OECD countries - Government spending and employment growth in the sector failed to keep pace with population and GDP growth.

As recently as 2005, Ireland still had the third lowest public expenditure rate as a percentage of GDP in the OECD, ahead of only Korea and Mexico. This is the record of the State on public services. Despite this, the Minister, Deputy Howlin, boasted earlier this month and again today in the House, that the "Government is making steady progress on reducing numbers employed in the public service. The number of posts has been reduced by 2,000 in the three months to end March 2011" and that "public service numbers have fallen by 16,400 since 2008", in case any of us had forgotten that fact. In celebrating this, the Minister, Deputy Howlin, finds himself in the dubious company of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and the like, who actively seek and celebrate increased unemployment during a recessionary period. This is a perverse position to take.

Public services are a real yardstick by which we measure our society's success. Equality in service provision illustrates how equal society is. In the boom times society became deeply unequal in most areas of public service provision. Undoubtedly, radical reform is needed but the reform agenda must not be used or abused to widen the chasm in society, run down services, hand over critical services such as health to the private sector or create an even greater level of unemployment across society.

To reform is to improve the experience for citizens,from the cradle to the grave, when accessing public services. The purpose of reform is to abolish bad practice and mismanagement. It is to change for the better how we do our business, keeping the citizen's well-being and rights at the centre of every decision we make.

The buck must stop with Ministers. The people want and deserve accountability. Disappointingly, there is no evidence of such commitment from the Government, quite the opposite. Recently, I asked the Minister for Finance how the Government intends to adequately deliver services to citizens while at the same time reducing public sector numbers. The Minister's response was interesting and instructive. He responded that it is a matter for local management to address service delivery issues with reduced numbers. This is not a case of joined-up thinking or accountability on behalf of the Government.

It is interesting to chart the journey of the Bill. The Labour Party's general election manifesto promised to establish for a limited time an office of public sector reform. As we know, reforming the public sector is not a one-off event, it is an on-going commitment to excellence, as it must be. The Labour Party stated it wanted fewer management layers in the civil and public service, and more freedom for managers to manage staff and budgets, which is quite a challenge when staff and budgets are facing at least €3 billion worth of cuts every year.

The Labour Party further promised more modern management and staffing structures; more user-centred services delivery; to drive reform planning and implement the change agenda with performance indicators identified to allow progress on high level priorities to be monitored; more accountability; transparency; multi-annual departmental budgets; and a citizen-centred approach to public service reform. In other words, motherhood and apple pie.

By contrast, Fine Gael, the party of small government, promised a 10% cut in public sector numbers and an increase in workload for frontline staff, who are to take up the additional slack of those fired by Fine Gael over the coming years. It wants to do this while retaining the recruitment embargo. An office to be responsible for public spending and modernisation was detailed but with no reform per se, just a slash and burn approach to public service numbers and spending.

Both parties, which now form the Government, promised upskilling and retraining throughout the Civil Service in human resources, finance, economics, corporate services and information technology. What we got in the programme for Government public sector reform commitments was a hotchpotch of rationalisation and a mishmash of modernisation measures, with a promise to empower civil servants. Then there is the recently renegotiated EU-IMF programme, which makes a reduction of public sector numbers and public sector spending a condition of support. The bailout agreed to by the Government fundamentally shapes and undermines any serious attempt at public sector reform. This is if one understands reform to be about quality and universal service provision. It is in this context that we look at the structures and staffing of this new Department.

The new Minister will be responsible for managing public expenditure in the overall envelope set by the Government but he is not responsible for the budgetary parameters as the Minister for Finance has retained these responsibilities.

The new Department of public expenditure and reform is housed in the Department of Finance. Two thirds of the new Department's staff come from the Department of Finance - in fact, many will not even have to move desks as the Department of Finance divisions in which they worked are to remain intact within the Department of public expenditure and reform. The recently appointed Secretary General to the Department of public expenditure and reform first began working for the Department of Finance in 1993, despite the Minister's commitment last month to attract external candidates to top jobs such as this to create a fair and competitive process designed to find the best person for the job.

In light of all of this, the following question must be asked. In real terms, how new is this new Department? This Bill details a transfer of statutory functions from the Department of Finance to the Department of public expenditure and reform but ultimately there is nothing really new in its role, bar perhaps the Department's name. It is also worth noting that the only division being transferred to the Minister which broadly addresses real reform comes from the Department of the Taoiseach, namely, the public service modernisation division. However, it is not specifically mentioned in the Bill nor is its function being made statutory. Within the three divisions, there are worthy and important functions but surely if this Department is to be truly new and steeped in a reform agenda, reshaping its structure and autonomy will be key it its success.

Recent outreach efforts by the Department of public expenditure and reform are welcome. Involving academics, other heads of Departments and various relevant stakeholders in the process of reform is a positive move. However, the most obvious concern is that since the new Department is being led by old hands within old structures, then old habits will win out.

If the Department of Finance could not let go of its management and control of expenditure, which is now clear, then the Government had two clear options - to exclude expenditure from the new Department or instead move a restructured Department to an alternative site. As neither option was chosen, the Minister's decisions will always be undermined by the fact that he remains under the thumb of the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, and Department of Finance mandarins. Perhaps this arrangement and division of the Department of Finance smoothed the passage to forming a coalition government. However, there is a very real possibility that the incoherence and inertia that may arise from the confusion and overlapping roles will be a heavy cost in terms of any supposed reform agenda.

The Minister said now is an opportune time for the Government to engage in a new process of change. He acknowledged that many of the State's systems and processes are in need of radical reform. The Minister believes cutting numbers is key but so too is the citizen. A number of reviews are under way, including the comprehensive spending review, the capital spending review and the departmental review of the McCarthy report on the sale of State assets as well as the Croke Park agreement. We are told the public service will be more dynamic, integrated, transparent and customer-focused and that the traditional values of integrity, impartiality, diligence and commitment, which are all alive and well in the public service, will be built on. The Minister intends to foster a culture of openness, transparency and accountability, but again the real measure of his success will be the experience of the citizen accessing a service.

If all these reforms are to be achieved, the Government needs to walk away from its rationalisation model - its commitment to cutbacks. This model has already fundamentally undermined service provision. Current reductions in public service numbers have arisen primarily from a natural fall-off, or "wastage" - a word I do not like - which, in itself, is a natural process and one that does not ordinarily undermine a system provided the lost experience and skills are replaced and replenished, but this is not the case.

The Government's absolute refusal to lift the embargo means that experienced and fully skilled psychiatric nurses and gardaí - to give two examples - are not being replaced. This, coupled with increased demand on services as a result of this and the previous Government's commitment to stifling growth, is creating deeper inequities within the system and in wider society. This Government is falling at the very first hurdle.

Addressing the front line personnel deficit will deliver immediate benefits not only to our people, but critically to the economy. Austerity has failed spectacularly. Growth is down, unemployment is up and the public purse simply cannot shell out endlessly for private banking debt.

Implementing a full programme of modernisation across the public sector will take a number of years. Cross skill training across departmental management is vital but again it will take a number of years before we see the full benefits of this. Updating and integrating technology and online services again is key but it will take time.

Root and branch reform of the culture and systems within the Civil Service and public service which has led, in some instances, to outlandish wages, no accountability and bad practice among the highest paid requires a deep transformation. Changing the top-down culture from one that sees its role as one that serves the political class to one that serves the citizen can be achieved but even if the Government was committed to such a programme, this too would take time and we know time is not on its side. Unless Fine Gael and the Labour Party embark on a real programme of reform and modernisation across the public sector while critically bolstering front line services, this new Department, like the Government and the one before it, will have failed the people spectacularly.

In moving this Bill, the Minister reminded us of the harsh economic climate that exists. He signalled that productivity and value for money must be at the heart of public sector reform. He is absolutely right and I support his position on that. However, resourcing front line services must also be a foundation stone of real public sector reform. The Minister is in a state of denial or delusion or perhaps both when he claims that public services have been largely unaffected by the cutbacks, or budgetary consolidation to use the polite term, pursued by the last Government and continued by the current Administration. The Minister's assertion that we cannot afford current levels of services will send a shiver down the back of every person who has been short-changed by the current overstretched and under-resourced services.

Let me end as I began: the ultimate measure of any reform agenda within the public sector will be the experience of citizens seeking and accessing services. The people will be the jury and they will decide ultimately the success or failure of this enterprise.

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