Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The first of the shared services projects is ahead of schedule. We are calling it PeoplePoint. It will be a shared service for Civil Service human resource management and it will be up and running early next year. We are examining other areas that might migrate into that, including pensions. We are also considering whether banking and financial management can be done on a shared basis. There is a structure to look in an overarching way at the reform agenda and that is my Department. The reform and delivery office is about the delivery of reform across the public service and its director is sitting beside me.

His unit in my Department is the overall co-ordinator, reporting directly, as I do, to the Cabinet committee on public sector reform. That committee consists of the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Ministers for Public Expenditure and Reform, Finance, Education and Skills, Health, Justice and Equality, and Children and Youth Affairs, and the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, and their officials. I will supply the Deputy with the schedule of meetings we have had, which take place every quarter. We held one in October and the next one will be in February. We give a report to it and so on. I am anxious to mirror reporting to this committee so that we can be up to date with what is happening with that.

We had the discussion about SUSI yesterday. It predated my Department and the co-ordination that now exists there. The Deputy made a very compelling case yesterday that we should look at it even as a case study for things to be avoided.

I was asked whether allowances would be encompassed in a successor to the Croke Park agreement. The report of the Committee of Public Accounts will be issued today and I look forward to reading it. I believe the Committee of Public Accounts now agrees with me that there are some allowances that are core pay and we should migrate to calling them such so that there is no confusion about it. There are some allowances that are almost anachronistic now. I identified those in my own trawl and am seeking to address them under the existing Croke Park agreement architecture. It will certainly be part of the discussions in what I call Croke Park extension.