Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The interesting thing is that even though there are 30 partnerships, the payroll for all Tús schemes and the RSS is done in Clifden, County Galway. It is done centrally for all the companies. In other words, even though the individual companies are the employers, the payroll is done on contract by the State in Clifden, County Galway, through Pobal. That is convenient because it is a tedious job that involves a lot of responsibility. Professional people are doing that job. The process has to be repeated numerous times and as Mr. Glynn said, if something happens, they all must learn the new system.

What is interesting is how that came about. When we set up the RSS, the Secretary General of the Department had previously been an assistant secretary at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, so he knew his way around the system. He came up with an ingenious idea, which we discussed in detail, that we would centrally administer things like payroll. We would only have 30 employers taking all the responsibility of employment law, insurance and whatever. There would be local autonomy. We had good and robust discussions and we came up with what I believe was a good formulation.

Even allowing that it is very hard to get swift change in the system, significant improvements could be made to reduce the burden and centralise processes, as happens in local authorities and so on with certain functions. That takes burden from what would be a small, voluntary company.