Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 1 February 2018

Public Accounts Committee

2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 10: Shared Services - Management of Salary Overpayments
Appropriation Accounts 2016
Vote 18 - National Shared Services Office

9:00 am

Photo of David CullinaneDavid Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ms Murphy-Fagan used the terminology in her own opening statement on the modernisation of corporate administration and professionalism. I do not have a difficulty with the use of the word "corporate" but it suggests something that is not normally used in the world of public services. I am looking then at what happened in Britain where the services were put into a shared service office to centralise HR, payroll and related services and that was then outsourced and, in essence, privatised. It became profitable to do it then. Once one has set up a unit like that, has shared services and does what Ms Murphy-Fagan says she wants to do, namely modernise corporate administration, the next logical step for some is to outsource and privatise the service. Is that something that could be envisaged in this State if we follow the logic of what happened in Britain? I am trying to understand Ms Murphy-Fagan saying we are behind the curve while looking at what has happened in most European countries. Where these service offices were set up, almost all of them were outsourced over time.

If my comment is there, it is around the use of shared service models. I was not referring to outsourcing.

The Deputy is asking me to comment on a policy matter that at some point of time in the future but that is not necessarily within my own-----

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.