Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The National Competitiveness Council is a group of people serviced by the strategic policy unit of the Department. It is not a spending centre. It commissions consultancy reports and publishes reports, and is entirely independent. A new chairman has just been appointed. I strengthened the council by including industry partners who are actively engaged in key sectors and we have an effective body. It is not a question of a line in the budget; the real issue is to ensure our strategic policy unit is a real driver of new thinking in the Department, and at present it is working on enterprise 2025. Traditionally the Department has had strong agencies and a weak Department. Forfás was outsourced and largely run under the auspices of the agencies. The idea of bringing it in is to give the Department a stronger arm in being able to think afresh, which we are determined to do. We established a protocol at the very start to ensure Forfás would not be sucked into line management and would retain its independence and capacity to produce reports without fear or favour. It is not so much about Forfás being a line in the budget, but about giving it this independence. Already I can see the benefit for the Department of having an active policy arm.

I would like to see more of our officials having a more active interface with our client base. That is one of the weaknesses. The agencies have the front-of-house experience. We need to see that experience filter back into the Department. That is an area we should be examining in terms of how we can get more exposure to the marketplace for our senior line managers and policy people.