Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

As the Deputy will be aware, the work of the strategic management initiative, which really commenced in 1992, was centred in my Department for the entire Government area. It was not just for my Department.

That report started the work on the financial management in Departments, on the human resources management in Departments and on many other guidelines that have been set out for various systems' improvements in Departments. There were not people in the Government system who were capable of dealing with that. I have listed a breakdown of the various initiatives that happened under that but, by and large, it was to try to improve the modernisation and change management agenda across a range of Departments. The Department's modernisation programme represented some of those costs and related to the implementation of modernisation initiatives, but the costs went mainly on the modern financial management and the human resources management systems. There were some other ones, including performance management and development systems. It has proved to be highly successful. We now have very modern financial management systems.

The reason for outside engagement in this was the move to accrual accounting, which we had not got in Departments previously. Up until then the entire system operated on a cash basis. The moves in recent years to develop an accrual accounts system make it far more modern. They make it similar to that which would probably apply in industry, but it was always done previously on a cash basis where one had the carry-over rather than the accrual system.

Equally, there have been substantial savings. Up until we introduced, a few years after 2001, the human resource management system, issues were recorded but one did not have the ability to get the breakdowns and the information on staffing and costs, expenditures on telephones, allowances and such issues which are now built into the HR system. That has proved to be very effective in my Department and I am sure right across the system. The work that was undertaken over the years on this has now proved that we have a very modern financial reporting system.

See this speech in context