Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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I refer to section 2(3) which states:

The Minister may by order declare that, for the purposes of this Act, the administrative area (including, in the case of a county, the administrative area of any town council situated within that county) of a local authority specified in the order forms part of the functional area of another local authority specified in the order.

It would not be envisaged as an action because the county is a robust unit which people understand. The purpose of this provision is to encourage counties and local authorities to understand that the success of their county depends on the success of their enterprises and in particular the smaller enterprises. Our aim is to enhance our capacity to reach enterprise by enlisting the support of what is a very significant economic player in the county. There are long-stop powers to have the service provided by a different local authority but this is not something we would envisage. A service level agreement of this nature will be organic.
We want Enterprise Ireland to be innovative. For example, micro-finance is an innovation which is being delivered through the local enterprise offices. We would like to enhance mentoring and perhaps reorganise the system of mentoring so that in cases where a county would not have access to specialists that these could be provided through the network. The service level agreements will emerge and evolve over time but the performance metrics are an inherent part of them so they will be published. The service level agreement will set out the metrics that are to be delivered. The allocation of the annual budget will be revised based on demand and quality of service. If a county is not delivering and is unable to justify the level of activity as against the budget allocation, the first issue will be to examine whether the continuing level of budget allocation is justified. This is the conversation we envisage.
Service level agreements are at an early stage of development. The Department has service level agreements with IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and all departmental agencies and offices and we are learning to use them. They are a very important way of empowering a Department such as ours to have a better policy input, better monitoring and a better capacity to understand and to drive change.

That is what a central policy department should be about. We very much see these as way of the future but we could not lock such agencies into having to come back to get them approved every time modifications are made. I envisage whoever is on the Opposition benches will make sure that no Minister will slide back on expecting high levels of service delivery and insisting on publication of the standards.