Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 22 June 2016
Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Estimates for Public Services 2016
Vote 11 (Department of Public Expenditure and Reform) (Revised)
Vote 12 (Superannuation and Retired Allowances) (Revised)
Vote 14 (State Laboratory) (Revised)
Vote 15 (Secret Service) (Revised)
Vote 17 (Public Appointments Service) (Revised)
Vote 18 (Shared Services) (Revised)
Vote 19 (Office of the Ombudsman) (Revised)
Vote 39 (Office of Government Procurement) (Revised)
9:00 am
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source
There are four more Departments to go. We believe we are on track to move most target Departments in, and the benefit of that is that when PeoplePoint is fully up and running and all the target organisations are in, it will deliver €3.7 million in savings per year. The objective is that all the transactions being conducted by individual Departments will be moved to a central unit.
The Deputy is correct in saying there are some areas into which the Ombudsman is due to move and have a role, such as direct provision. That will come into effect from 1 November 2016. Other areas will include prisoner complaints, as supported by the Department of Justice and Equality. A possible area of expansion will be into the area of clinical judgments. When this happens it will affect staff numbers for next year and not this year, so we will deal with that in the context of the Estimates for 2017.
I have made a very explicit statement about FEMPI: there is an additional cost to the Exchequer of €1.4 billion of current expenditure. We cannot accelerate the Lansdowne Road agreement or the change of FEMPI. Anything that can be done has to be done in a graduated and sustainable manner. For those reasons, the Lansdowne Road agreement and its architecture are vital to managing all of the competing demands on our public finances.
No comments