Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The agreement is a fantastic enabler of change. The Deputy will remember the old days when moving people to a better office meant paying them a movement allowance and one would have a work-to-rule and God knows what else. All of that has been blown away. We are moving people up to 45 km from their base and thousands of public servants have been moved on that basis. We have also changed rosters to fill gaps. This has worked well where management has been proactive. Problems have only arisen where middle management has been inactive in driving change. We need to get on top of this issue. One will always hear anecdotes about whether extra hours in teaching are being utilised in a practical way. One of the things I have to do is ensure extra hours we secure across the public service migrate into pay savings.

On the trickle down reform agenda and unemployment, the latter is a significant issue. The joint committee may wish to examine the structure of the live register, on which I agree with Deputy Michael Creed. For example, I know of people who have retired from the main banks, having paid a class A stamp throughout their careers, and because they are not old enough to receive an old age pension, they are obliged to sign on to maintain their stamp. They are not looking for work in any real sense, yet they are counted as being unemployed. We need to disaggregate those who are really unemployed from those who are not really unemployed and dig down into the live register. This is a process in which the Departments of Social Protection and Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation are engaged.