Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair.

I wish to highlight three areas in which I believe there is a particular role for the Minister's Department. The Minister highlighted himself the issue of public and Government procurement and I have engaged with him on this issue previously. On life cycle costing, the Minister talked about measures to ensure the prioritisation of services and works which have a reduced environmental impact. Of course, the only way this can be done is by bringing in measures that will actually require them to be prioritised. As there is still the widespread use of cost-only procurement processes, which is where the lowest cost is the only determinant, that does not allow for the scope of the life cycle piece nor does it ensure that environmental factors are properly considered. I had constructive engagement with the Minister's colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, on the idea that the State would prioritise a price-quality or life cycle approach. This kind of approach to procurement would allow for the measures that the Minister outlined. Otherwise, if the only focus is on the lowest cost, then what the Minister outlined as a goal of the State will not be achieved.

The Minister has a crucial role when it comes to the public service and the public sector. Within this legislation there is a public sector climate action mandate and I am interested how this can be facilitated and strengthened. He also mentioned the performance evaluation in respect of capital infrastructure. Is there strong performance evaluation of the ongoing work of the public sector bodies? More specifically, I refer to the key performance indicators, KPIs, of senior civil and public servants. What tools are being used to support and encourage delivery from public sector bodies?

My main and crucial point today is on the role of the commercial semi-State sector. The Minister flagged this point earlier and it is key. He mentioned Bord na Móna and its potential but there is even greater potential with Coillte. Coillte is responsible for 7% of the land in the State. Currently, the mandate of Coillte is commercial. While it may have some environmental or climate projects, the mandate is clearly on a commercial basis. There was a promise in the programme for Government to review that mandate and to look at how it might be affected. I have legislation which seeks to do just exactly that. During the debate on that, we were told that the Government wished to use its influence through its role as shareholders. The problem with that is that in the shareholder letter sent to Coillte from the Government - not the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, I wish to clarify that it was a former Minister - it stated in the first line on policy objectives that the company should be profitable and cash-generative, maintaining financial policies and capital structures that looked to the payments of dividends for shareholders. While there was some language around climate further on in the letter and there are some interesting projects that Coillte are engaged in, the clear message is not around delivering value for the State in the wider sense but rather on cash returns. This may be at odds with what is in the climate Act where the State obliges the Government to achieve the best possible value for money, as the Minister himself outlined. The best value for money is not necessarily pushing a commercial semi-State to deliver cash but to look at the resource that it is; it is responsible for 7% of the land of the State and we should be asking ourselves if a lot more could be achieved if we shifted the mandate to an economic, social and environmental one, rather than just economic one. This is what I am certainly proposing. There is no balance between the commercial mandate against the desire to do environmental projects and such.