Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

It is great to be back and see an old friend in the Chair.

I apologise to the House. I regret we did not have more time. Those who know me know that I would love to debate every line of this. I will have opportunities in coming debate. However, this is largely a technical Bill to, if you like, legalise me and the work that I need to do. We will deal with the policy side of it in detail, line by line, because I have significant matters to bring to this House. Before the end of this term I hope to publish the Pensions Bill, and I will graft into that the changes in pay to formalise them legally, including to formalise the pay reductions for members of the Government, and so on, in legislation. I give the House this assurance. As far as I can, because I know the time frame on which we are working, I will not seek to curtail debate here in so far as it is practical not to. I apologise that Senators feel under pressure today but I hope that they will bear with us in terms of the technical nature of this legislation, which is simply an enabling Bill. Most of it is not much more than a recitation of current statute that simply disaggregates it into the functional work of the Minister for Finance and the Minister with responsibility for public expenditure and reform. We need to have the bigger debate on a different platform in a more structured way and I am sure we will do that in the committee system as well because we cannot do it all in the House. I will not have time to deal with everything.

Procurement is a significant issue. In response to the commentary of Senator O'Brien, we need to do better. I have held many discussions with the Minister of State to look at procurement policies and best practice elsewhere. I had a meeting with all of the senior officials and international leaders in Google yesterday. I will go down to them because they do all their procurement for Google across Europe in Ireland and they are efficient at it. I have looked at how we can address all of those matters.

In terms of the staffing of my Department, I would like a chance, perhaps before the committee, to explain what I am doing in the Department. As the House will be aware, I recruited a new Secretary General. He was the only assistant secretary who spent some time outside the public system. I intend to establish a director of reform within the Department who will be an external driver of reform and who, I hope, will have experience in bringing about significant change in a significant private sector body. If there is such a person in the public sector who has experience elsewhere, of course that person can be considered.