Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is asking a crucial question: are we going to have new schemes? I presume this is an issue that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, will be addressing in the context of the discussions that are ongoing with trade union colleagues on this issue. The net issue is that the Government has given a commitment to get down to numbers of 282,500 by 2015, coming from a height of 320,000 in 2008. This is the target we must hit. There is some evidence that a considerable number of people have come out of the system. At the moment there are 290,000, but how we manage to get the next 8,000 or 9,000 in net reductions will be a critical issue.

There is some evidence that a group of people who withdrew their applications to depart in February may be incentivised to consider it again if a new scheme is established. The question is what the cost of that will be and whether we target it at particular sectors where there is a given requirement. This issue will of necessity come out of the dialogue with the trade unions and on our side with management as a means of trying to ensure that we get to the number of 282,500 by 2015 and do so in a way that does not diminish the number of front-line staff.

I offer one example of how to transform things and make a difference. One of the key aspects of public sector reform is shared services. Next year we will launch a human resources, HR, shared service. The total number of people involved in HR in central government is 850. The new HR shared services will do it all with 600 people. This means we will have more than 250 people to redeploy. That is a small example of what we can do if we get buy-in for the things we need in shared services.