Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Under the 1924 Act, taoisigh are responsible for all actions of all 350,000 civil servants every day and everywhere. I had therefore better not say that I am not responsible.

It is not about that, as I will try to explain. The Deputy will be familiar with good customer service and the various subgroups in the Departments, each of which has a departmental charter. Civil servants are meant to spend a set amount of time dealing with queries regarding what they do and how they deal and communicate with the public. That work is done well. The Revenue Commissioners and social welfare offices have been the two sectors to take a lead and drive on work with other Departments. Independent customer surveys have produced extraordinary figures for public satisfaction regarding Departments' service. Not everywhere is that good, but they are doing well. The general view on that end of the work is that they must keep at it. That is ongoing, with two committees working on it.

The OECD review is not simply another report on the public service but the first comprehensive review of it as a system in this country. The concept is of a holistic, wide-ranging assessment that will identify many different things. It has been explained to me in discussions with those involved that no experts have been engaged in Ireland and that OECD staff conduct this work in different countries themselves. They have produced reports on various issues.

The first of two main elements they attempt to gauge is how the Irish public service compares with those recognised in OECD countries as following good practice in aspects of public management. That uses the unique insights of the OECD in the field, since it covers all those member countries and knows the models and plans. The organisation benchmarks the best. It compares our systems and processes with the best models. Its staff come here and engage with our Secretaries General and a committee of assistant secretaries from the different Departments. That first process has already commenced, with several meetings held in recent months.

The second element is how the various parts of our system relate to each other, a major issue dating back to the Public Service Management Act 1997. They cannot be independent fiefdoms but must co-ordinate with each other. The OECD scrutinises the relationship between central and local government and how Departments translate objectives into actions, whether the field be health or local government. In particular, it examines health and education to see if there are better ways in which common issues can be addressed. When I undertook the review, I asked it to give me two examples, which turned out to be child care and social inclusion, both of them split between many different Departments and agencies.

That is the purpose of the review, and the senior levels of the Civil Service believe that it will help. They are satisfied with what they did in the public service reform 20 years ago and the Public Service Management Act 1997. They now believe that this is the next level. It would be beneficial to examine how the systems relate to each other. In my view, one works for the public service rather than for Department A or B. I hope that simplifies matters for the Deputy.

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