Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I can respond to the Deputy's second point by saying that the work which needs to take place to overhaul and modernise human resources practices within our public and civil services needs to be led by a line Department. While the Public Appointments Service will be doing various pieces of work in this area, I envisage that it will continue to focus most of its work on appointments and on selecting candidates for State boards. I believe the work that is under way will deliver against the needs to which the Deputy refers. The progress we are making in some of these areas is better than is sometimes acknowledged. The 2017-2020 people strategy for the Civil Service is driven by the anticipation that up to 10,000 civil servants will retire in the coming years. This feeds into the first question asked by the Deputy, which I will answer in a moment. We need to look at ways of continuing to improve our efforts to give people structured career paths over which they have visibility. Perhaps we have not been able to do this up to now.

I think we are making progress in two areas. Figures have been presented to me to show that this is happening. I can see it happening with my own eyes. People are moving at different levels of our Civil Service between various Departments and agencies. I am seeing far more mobility across Departments than I have seen at other times. I see two other positive developments that are happening. Higher levels of recruitment are now taking place within our Civil Service. Over recent years, I have seen a real change in the experience of the people who are coming in. When I attend engagements with broad groups within the Civil Service, I see a far broader diversity of age and experience than I would have seen in the middle of the previous Dáil and Government. I think the long-term effects of that will be very positive.

I am seeing growing evidence of our ability to meet expertise needs in areas of the Civil Service, such as the topical area of international taxation. Our Departments and the Revenue Commissioners now have the ability to attract and recruit people who will work in the Civil Service or the Revenue Commissioners for a number of years before deciding to stay on or go back to the private sector. We should acknowledge that this is a welcome and positive development and we should continue to support it over the coming years. The important changes that have been made have resulted in higher levels of recruitment, more diversity among those who work in the Civil Service and greater opportunities for mobility from Department to Department. As I have said, the people strategy for the Civil Service that is in place for the period up to 2020 looks at how we can deal with issues like mentoring and development as a way of reflecting the fact that the private sector is far more competitive than it has been in the past. In the coming weeks, we will launch the Public Service 2020 plan, which is the next phase of public service reform and in which the Public Appointments Service will play a role.

The Deputy's first question related to the variance in the number of retirements. I am satisfied that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is doing everything it can to predict recruitment levels in order that those numbers can feed into the expenditure commitments we have each year. We have a continual difficulty in anticipating when a group of people will retire. It is understandable that we have to provide for lump sum payments in the year in which those payments are made. This means that a small movement in either direction has an effect on our expenditure commitments for that year. As I have said, there is a five-year window within which the majority of civil servants can choose to retire. A curve in the demographics within our Civil Service, for want of a better phrase, is approaching us at the moment. The number of people who are eligible for retirement will increase between now and 2021. A small movement in the number of people who expect to retire will mean that we have to hand money back to other parts of the Department or to the Exchequer, or that we have to look for additional money from the Exchequer for the year in question. Having said all of that, the total amount of money we are looking for from the Oireachtas this year is a gross Estimate of €10.5 million from a total subhead of just under €540 million. I believe the variance is at a level I can stand over at this committee this morning.