Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 8, line 20, to delete “save”.

Amendments Nos. 3 to 12, inclusive, and amendment No. 20 are technical in nature and have been advised by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. At present the functions are formulated with reference to the public service bodies as a group. As currently drafted, the putting in place of the first delegation would give the office the power to start providing shared services to all public service bodies. To address this, section 9 (2)(a) will be amended to read: "whenever an order in respect of a public service body is in force, the Office shall have the following functions in respect of that public service body.". It goes on to say that this requires further amendment of paragraphs (1) to (13) to remove references to public service bodies, where appropriate.

Amendment No. 20 is a technical amendment to Schedule 1. The advice of Parliamentary Counsel is to include the national shared services office in the schedule of the public sector bodies. Staff officers and civil servants are in receipt of their own salaries. A further addition to Schedule 1 may be required later and with the consent of the committee this will be considered by the Department officials on Report Stage. As I said, the amendments are technical in nature.