Mr. P. J. Fitzpatrick:

First, on the reduction in numbers, there has been full co-operation across the board although people do not really have a choice in this regard. On redeployment, there has been full co-operation and full engagement with the agreement. As for the areas around which we would like to see greater urgency, we have identified shared services, for example, as the big one. In sectors such as local government and education, which are ready-made for shared services, there is no reason for loads of organisations to be doing the same work. In this regard, members may have seen the recent review but the local government sector has now put in place a dedicated office and has identified 29 projects for shared service potential, which range from major projects like payroll and pensions and human resources down to items such as waste permits, for example, which have been centralised in a single county for all the counties in Ireland. I would say the big one is education, where there is much scope for shared services, in that there are a lot of third level colleges doing pretty much the same work. While some work has been done in that there is some joint procurement and so on, there is big-ticket stuff there. I note the new reform unit in the Department is driving this with the different sectors. However, if the Deputy asked me about the area for the biggest savings that needs more acceleration, this is one big area. The other one is online services. Very often, people wait for a big expensive system to put in online services but this is not always required. For example, when the second house tax was introduced, the local government sector had that up and running within weeks. Very often, it does not cost a fortune to put in place online services. Sometimes, people think it needs a major IT system when it actually involves quite a modest investment. The new single student grant facility was implemented very quickly.