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

The Minister of State, Deputy O'Donovan, and I are pleased to be with the committee to present the 2019 Estimates for my Department’s group of Votes. The group comprises a significant number of Votes, namely, the Votes for the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and for the Office of Government Procurement; the Votes for a number of offices under the aegis of my Department, namely, the State Laboratory, the Public Appointments Service, the National Shared Services Office and the Office of the Ombudsman; and the Votes for superannuation and retired allowances, which covers Civil Service pensions, and the Secret Service. The Vote for the remaining element of the Public Expenditure and Reform group, that for the Office of Public Works, is handled separately by this committee.

I note that the committee has been supplied with a very detailed briefing by my Department’s officials on the various Votes in the Public Expenditure and Reform group, including those organisations under the aegis of the Department. Further detailed material is also contained in the Revised Estimates for Public Services 2019 which were prepared by my Department and published in December 2018.

In an overall context, it is worth noting that the total net allocation for 2019 for the Public Expenditure and Reform group, comprising eight Votes, shows a modest increase of 3.2% on the 2018 allocation. The 2019 overall net figure is €537.7 million compared with €520.9 million in 2018. The structure of the Public Expenditure and Reform Vote remains unchanged, with two strategic programmes focused on public expenditure and sectoral policy and on public service management and reform. The requested resources for each programme, in terms of staffing and funding, are set out in Part III of the Estimate. In total, we are seeking a 5% increase in net spend on this Vote. The increase is required on the first programme, namely, public expenditure and sectoral policy, due to an increase in administrative pay to cover the cost of posts created in 2018 but yet to be filled, the pay increases under the Public Service Stability Agreement 2018-20, and €800,000 due to a decrease in expected income from EU programmes and a reduction in income from the additional superannuation contribution that has replaced the pension related deduction since 1 January. In 2018, the Department consumed 96% of its gross expenditure, when capital carryover is included. The 2018 gross saving of €2.6 million, or 4% on the provisional outturn, was the lowest since my Department’s establishment in 2011.

On programme B of the Public Expenditure and Reform Vote, dealing with public service management and reform, reform of our public service has consistently been a key priority for this Government, and a comprehensive series of reforms have been implemented since we published the first public service reform plan in November 2011. I launched the current iteration of public service reform, Our Public Service 2020, at the end of 2017 and the framework became operational during 2018. This builds on the work and achievements of the previous reforms while setting out a path up to 2020. The three pillars are delivering for our public, innovating for our future and developing people and organisations. One of the key considerations of the OECD in its assessment of Ireland’s second public reform plan 2014–16 was that the next phase of development for the Irish public service must focus on innovation. To this end, Our Public Service 2020 contains a number of firm commitments to champion a culture of innovation across the public service.

Some €500,000 has been included in my Department’s reform agenda fund on a pilot basis. This money has been set aside as a resource to incentivise public service bodies to fund or co-fund innovative projects. My Department will be seeking applications that encourage the use of new technologies, create opportunities for new partnerships, and strengthen our ability to innovate and develop solutions across different Departments.

These are generally for small projects but we want to see what we can learn.

As Minister for Public Service and Reform, I recently introduced the first public service data strategy on how we can store and manage large amounts of data. In parallel, the Data Sharing and Governance Bill, which the Minister of State, Deputy O’Donovan, dealt with in the House last night, aims to create the legal basis for the governed sharing of non-sensitive data between entitled public service bodies. Ireland achieved first place in the European Commission’s open data maturity assessment for the second year in a row. Ireland’s open data portal contains over 8,000 datasets that cover a range of areas including housing, water quality, statistical and geographic data.

Access to official, open format non-personal data supports more effective decision-making. It is essential that the public service continues to develop digital services that meet the needs and expectations of people. An important element of how we do this is the acceleration of the digital delivery of services which is covered in Our Public Services 2020. Key to progress in the provision of digital public services is having people with the right skills in the right roles to develop these services. We have been working with Civil Service HR departments to progress a range of initiatives relating to ICT professionalisation in the service. We recently introduced the first ever ICT specialist programme.

In addition to progress in public service reform, we continue to pursue a number of wide-ranging reforms that are covered in the opening statement circulated to members. I will, therefore, only touch briefly on where we stand in respect of the Data Sharing and Governance Bill and on improving the use of data. I already dealt with the open data strategy.

Work continues to develop equality budgeting, an area which continues to be important to me. I am working with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Zappone, on this in the context of identifying how we can develop and generate more data on the impact of equality budgeting on more Government services. As announced in my budget 2019 speech, equality budgeting is to be expanded to further develop the gender budgeting elements. The 2019 Revised Estimates Volume looks at particular spending streams to see how we can develop new objectives and indicators. I am very serious about seeing how we might make more progress in this area.

This is the third and final year of the current spending review process. Over 50 analytical papers have been published. I am pleased to hear that many of these papers are being used in public debate on Government spending. We are moving into our third year and looking at how we can develop a more robust database regarding the effects of Government spending.

I will conclude by commenting on Brexit. Clearly, the latter is the key challenge we need to manage in the coming weeks. The Tánaiste will publish the omnibus Bill - which deals with 15 different areas across nine Departments - on Friday. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform does not have a legislative section in the Bill. That section is the responsibility of the Department of Finance. I will be appearing before different committees to brief members on the respective sections of the Bill. All of the engagement I will have with this committee will relate to the finance aspect.